Israel and the ICC: A catch-22 for the West’s rules-based order
A demonstrator with a Palestinian flag outside the ICC, during a rally urging prosecution of Israel’s army for war crimes, 29 November 2019
Mouin Rabbani writes in The New Arab on 3 Dec, 2024:
Shortly after the Palestinian Authority (PA) submitted its first and ultimately unsuccessful application to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2009, a discussion with a European diplomat turned to the subject of Israeli impunity.
A successful Palestinian application, and eventual ICC investigation of Israeli conduct in the occupied territories would, according to my interlocutor, present European governments with a serious dilemma.
Specifically, it would force them to choose between their commitment to Israel and their professed commitment to international law and its newest creation, the ICC.
Left unstated, but more than implied, was that any such investigation would inevitably lead to indictments of Israeli leaders for a variety of crimes enumerated in the ICC’s Rome Statute.
In other words, European governments would be forced to either comply with their international obligations or reject them. Fifteen years later, that most European of dilemmas – choosing between principles sanctimoniously pontificated around the globe with incessantly wagging fingers, and putting said principles into practice oneself – has suddenly become all too real. Its resolution will surprise only the most extraordinarily naïve and gullible among us.