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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/icc-warrants-both-historic-and-cynical">electronicintifada.net</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">ICC warrants both historic and cynical</h1>
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<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-author"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali Abunimah</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-blog"><a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability">Rights and Accountability</a></span>
<span class="gmail-field gmail-field-publication-date"><span class="gmail-date-display-single">20 May 2024</span></span> </p>
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<img src="https://electronicintifada.net/sites/default/files/styles/original_800w/public/2024-05/20210616-icc-prosecutor-karim-khan-12.jpeg?itok=xjuI8JSw×tamp=1716212296" width="394" height="263" alt="Portrait of Karim Khan in judicial robes next ICC flag" title="" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 25px;">
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<p>Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan (<a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state">ICC</a>)</p>
<p>The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced on
Monday that he is seeking arrest warrants against two top Israeli
leaders for crimes in the Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>Karim Khan <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state">said</a>
that he had “reasonable grounds to believe” that Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant “bear criminal
responsibility” for a number of international crimes committed since 8
October, including starvation as a weapon of war, murder, intentionally
attacking civilians, extermination, persecution and other crimes against
humanity.</p>
<p>The decision which has been too long in coming is as vexing as it is momentous.
</p>
While there will be relief that finally Israel’s shield of immunity and
impunity is being punctured, Khan also charged several leaders of the
Palestinian resistance movement Hamas with various crimes.
<p>Khan claims that Hamas politburo leader Ismail Haniyeh, its Gaza
leader Yahya Sinwar and the chief of its military wing Muhammad Deif are
responsible for crimes including extermination, murder, hostage-taking,
torture and rape.</p>
<p>The political nature of the charges against the Hamas leaders is
clear from the fact that Khan has charged more Palestinians with crimes
than Israelis.</p>
<p>A cynical view might be that Khan only charged the two Israeli
leaders that Washington wants to see gone, while letting countless other
Israeli political and military officials off the hook – at least for
now.</p>
<p>Moreover, Khan included the charges of rape and sexual violence, giving credence to Israeli atrocity propaganda that has been <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mass-rape-accusation">thoroughly debunked</a>, and for which Israel has presented <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israeli-rights-group-admits-it-helped-spread-false-claims-about-7-oct-rapes">no credible evidence</a>.</p>
<p>It is notable that while Khan explicitly charged the Palestinian
leaders with “torture,” that word does not appear in the charges against
Netanyahu and Gallant, even though there are many credible reports of
systematic torture against Palestinians on a horrifying scale, including
in <a href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/inside-one-israeli-death-and-torture-camp">closed detention camps</a>.</p>
<p>Most glaringly, Khan failed to lay any charges against Netanyahu and Gallant under Article 6 of the ICC’s founding <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/Publications/Rome-Statute.pdf">Rome Statute</a> – the section that deals with genocide.</p>
<p>He only charged them under chapters 7 and 8, which address crimes
against humanity and war crimes – the same articles he used against the
Hamas leaders.</p>
<p>Khan could also have filed charges related to Israeli crimes
elsewhere in Palestine, for example Israel’s construction of illegal
colonies all over the occupied West Bank – a crime that has been ongoing
for decades.</p>
<p>By failing to do so, he is feeding the false impression that history began on 7 October 2023.</p>
<h2>Resistance is always criminalized</h2>
<p>While Khan can attempt to market all this as demonstrating equal
justice, it is no such thing: It is an outrageous and false equivalence.
He could not maintain a shred of credibility if he did nothing against
Israeli leaders, so he did the minimum he thought he could get away
with.</p>
<p>But this will also be of no surprise to anyone, least of all Hamas
leaders, who would have expected to be charged as the price of obtaining
some measure of international justice for their people.</p>
<p>In January, for instance, Mousa Abu Marzouk, a senior leader of Hamas, <a href="https://mediareviewnet.com/2024/01/hamas-throws-down-the-gauntlet/">wrote</a>,
“Since 2015 Hamas has repeatedly expressed its interest in appearing
before and being judged by the ICC not on the basis of unsubstantiated
allegations and screams but evidence and facts. Israel has not.”</p>
<p>Abu Marzouk added: “Hamas stands ready to appear before the ICC with
witnesses and live testimony and bear the burden of any judicial finding
against it or its members after a full and fair trial with rules of
evidence; with examination and cross examination into what we have done
or not over the many years of our leadership as a national liberation
movement. Is Israel?”</p>
<p>And as Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/west-israel-never-initiates-violence-it-only-retaliates">points out</a>,
the West has always considered anti-colonial struggles to be criminal,
while its own colonial barbarity is always described as “defensive.”</p>
<p>In this context, Khan’s blatantly political effort to downplay Israel’s crimes is par for the course.
</p>
<h2>Pariah</h2>
<p>The arrest warrants – which have still to be formally issued by the
court’s judges – will have no immediate impact on Sinwar or Deif, whose
whereabouts as underground resistance leaders is unknown. Arrest by the
ICC is the least of their concerns.</p>
<p>As for Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh, he lives in Qatar, which is one of only a handful of countries that is not a <a href="https://asp.icc-cpi.int/states-parties">member of the ICC</a> and is therefore not legally obligated to arrest him and hand him over.</p>
<p>Hamas is already outlawed and subject to sanctions by the United
States and across Europe so it is not as if the movement’s leaders would
have been moving freely anyway.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, if Khan’s soft-pedaling of Israel’s atrocities is aimed
at placating Tel Aviv or its sponsors, it will definitely fail.</p>
<p>There is certain to be rage, uproar and more threats from Washington and Tel Aviv of the kind Khan recently <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/icc-prosecutor-calls-end-intimidation-staff-statement-says-2024-05-03/">pushed back on</a>.
</p>
And although Khan has pulled his punches, the arrest warrants will have
an enormous impact on Israel and its leaders, who now find themselves
ostracized and constrained in unprecedented ways.
<p>Netanyahu and Gallant will be unable to travel to dozens of
countries, including most of Europe, without fear of arrest. European
countries, in particular, which purport to uphold international law,
will either have to detain them and hand them over to the court, or
openly defy their legal obligations.</p>
<p>This includes Germany, which provides arms for Israel’s genocide while purporting to be a champion of international law.</p>
<p>The damage to Israel’s reputation and its descent into even greater
pariah status is assured, despite Khan’s every effort to soften the
blow.</p>
<p>The United States, Israel’s chief arms supplier and accomplice in the
genocide, is also not a member of the ICC, and it will not cooperate
with the arrest warrants.</p>
<p>But even for a government as heedless of international law as
Washington, the leaders of its closest ally being charged by the ICC
increases both the domestic and international political cost of
supporting Israel unconditionally.</p>
<p>Recall that President Joe Biden <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64998165">welcomed</a>
it when Khan applied for an ICC arrest warrant against Russian
President Vladimir Putin last year over Moscow’s military operation in
Ukraine.</p>
<p>The process of going from today’s announcement by Khan to the judges actually issuing the arrest warrants <a href="https://apnews.com/article/icc-khan-netanyahu-070941d21ccd1f2b9611032b88527575">could take</a> as much as two months.</p>
<p>Perhaps the only important question is whether Monday’s announcement
will deter Israel from continuing its extermination campaign in Gaza in
the meantime.</p><br>
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