Mirna Fahmy – Diplomatic Inside
Disputes and tensions are escalating between nations and politicians at the ICJ and ICC following the ICC’s latest warrant arrest request for Israel’s PM and IDF minister, as well as Hamas leaders.
For four months, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has witnessed an amplitude of roar and conflicts among countries when South Africa filed a genocide case against Israel on December 29, 2023, regarding Israel’s aggression in the Gaza Strip as part of Israel-Hamas’s war.
Despite many intensive political efforts from some countries like Egypt, which staunchly backed the case to prevent further suffering in the strip, the court did not rule on the core issue of whether Israel’s military offensive against Hamas amounts to genocide on January 26, 2024. In the ping-pong discussion, Israel has accused Egypt several times that Egypt is the one blocking the aid to reach Gaza, though the country announced that 80% of the aid is from its side.
After the Rafah military operation, which was prompted on May 6, 2024, by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), Egypt has escalated the case again at the ICJ, threatening Israel to dissolve the 1979 peace treaty if the operation doesn’t settle down and permitting the aid. It came after it issued a warning in a statement by its ministry of foreign affairs to comply with its obligations and implement interim measures requested by the ICJ to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid in Gaza.
This has infuriated Israel to stand up at the court and claim that its troops found 700 tunnel shafts, including 50 crossings in Egypt. The IDF even found the corpses of four hostages in these tunnels who were publicly tortured to death when Hamas committed the October 7 attack and posted their annihilation on social media. Speculations have risen from the Israeli side that one of the Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, has commuted through these tunnels to escape, and he is deeply demanded by Israel as he is the mastermind behind the October 7 attack. Filtering out the cameras that were snatched by the IDF when they spaded through these tunnels to wipe them out, they found footage of Sinwar while he was escaping with some family members and friends.
The tensions at the ICJ have upended and shifted to the International Criminal Court (ICC) when it announced on May 20, 2024, the warrant arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Minister of Defence of Israel Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh—for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, including Israelis and Palestinians. ICC prosecutor is Karim Ahmed Khan, a British lawyer from Pakistani origins.
These announcements provoked the ire of Israeli and worldwide politicians.
“The outrageous decision by the IC prosecutor Karim Khan to seek arrest warrants against the democratically elected leaders of Israel is an amoral outrage of historic proportions,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video on his X account after the ICC announcement.
“It will cast an everlasting mark of shame on the International Court.”
“Israel is waging just a war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organisation that perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
Netanyahu accused ICC prosecutor Karim Khan of creating a twisted and false moral equivalence between the leaders of Israel and the henchmen of Hamas. He described Karim’s justice as a travesty and a disgrace.
Gallant posted on X, ascertaining what Netanyahu has pinpointed: that Israel is fighting a war against a brutal terrorist organisation called Hamas. “Even in facing a cynical enemy, Israel abides by International Human Law (IHL) guidelines and maintains professional and moral standards.”
Finance Minister of Israel Bezalel Smotrich threatened that allies of Israel would stop the ICC from continuing its work if it issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
“Let me be clear: we reject the ICC’s application for arrest warrants against Israel’s leaders,” United States President Joe Biden stated in a press conference. He assured that “there is no equivalence between Israel and Hamas, and it is clear Israel wants to do all it can to ensure civilian protection.”
Being on the same wavelength, former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has expressed his view on X, calling the ICC “broken and corrupt.” He ensures that the Biden administration should immediately reinstate sanctions against the ICC.
Netanyahu isn’t being forthright politically, as Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz has threatened to quit the government if Netanyahu doesn’t provide a clear plan for what happens after the war on Gaza. The protestors, on the other hand, are all over Tel Aviv, yelling for Netanyahu’s resignation, which is raging day by day.
Another point that has been trembling with inaccuracy and aggregation is the Gaza death toll. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has revised its data pertaining to the number of Palestinian casualties in the seven-month-old Gaza war, reducing almost by half the number of women and children it previously said were killed in the hostilities between Israel and the Iranian-backed terror group Hamas. The Ministry of Health in Gaza is recording the casualties and deaths since the Israeli military operation on Gaza reached 35,000, and it has always been disputed by Israel and the world-wide organisations as Hamas is in control of the strip apart from the Palestinian authority in Ramallah. Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas and his advisor have always condemned Hamas and don’t take any accreditation from them. It is clear that over 80% of the Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced from their homes.
Among the 124 countries that are States Parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC, Israel isn’t a member to accept these charges that have befallen it. Palestine became the 123rd member of the ICC on April 1, 2015, in the hope of increasing their political leverage by threatening to bring charges against Israeli officials for war crimes committed in their occupied territories.
In the opinion of many Israeli supporters, the ICC is criminalising a democracy acting in self-defence against brutal terrorists. That’s why they are calling to impose secondary sanctions on the ICC itself, threatening any bank that conducts transactions on their behalf. Also, launch a carrot-stick diplomatic campaign targeting all ICC members to obtain assurance that they will refuse to honour ICC indictments against Americans or Israelis.
Hours later, after the warrant arrest announcement, it was revealed that British Human Rights ‘lawyer Amal Clooney acted on a panel of experts reviewing the ICC prosecutor’s investigation that led to the request for arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders and two Israeli leaders. The prosecutor, Karim Khan, said he was “grateful for the advice” from the expert panel, which included Clooney.
The ICC and ICJ are two distinct courts. The ICJ is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations for settlements that resolve disputes between states, while the ICC prosecutes individuals, especially political leaders, for crimes.
There are many political leaders besides Israeli and Hamas leaders that are on the “Warrant Arrest List.”
The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin in March 2023, accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi were pinned on the list as well before their execution which wasn’t carried out by ICC.
Ugandan Warlord Joseph Kony, the founder and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), is the ICC’s longest-standing fugitive. An arrest warrant was issued for him in 2005, charging 36 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, rape, using child soldiers, sexual slavery, forced marriage, and forced pregnancy.