Meetings at The Hague reveal crisis and turmoil, as state representatives grapple with Israeli warrants
A speaker at the 19th Session of the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties on 3 December 2019
David Kattenburg reports in Mondoweiss on 11 December 2024:
The issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former War Minister, Yoav Gallant, on November 21, not only shocked the Israeli and U.S. establishment but also some of the 125 State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who would soon be tasked with executing those warrants, once they’ve been certified and communicated to them by the Court Registry.
This past week, in the sprawling chambers of the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague, representatives of those countries gathered for the 23rd Session of the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties (ASP), the representative body that funds, governs, and supervises the implementation of the ICC’s founding treaty. The ASP ultimately ensures that the perpetrators of the most serious international crimes are arrested, tried, and jailed.
In both the ASP’s official convening and behind the scenes in the halls of The Hague, the topic fresh on everyone’s minds was the question of the ICC warrants against Netanyhau and Gallant and the potentially disastrous implications for the international rules-based order should state parties cave to external pressures seeking to shield the Israeli officials from accountability.
Among the crimes Netanyahu and Gallant have been charged with, in warrants classified ‘secret’: “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts,” all “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”