Netanyahu wishes to turn ICC arrest warrants into global no-confidence motion in international law

Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, 2023

Noa Landau writes in Haaretz on 22 November 2024:

Those who have worked with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu closely know how much he has always feared this very day. How many discussions did he convene during his many terms in office on the various scenarios for proceedings against Israel and Israelis in international courts? How many lengthy meetings did he hold about ways – some legitimate and some less so – to fight them in legal, diplomatic and other pathways?

These individuals were once proud to work with him but are now filled with disappointment. They were nevertheless astonished as they watched how, over the past year, Netanyahu led himself, certainly and slowly, to the defendant’s seat at The Hague – the place that always made him so worried.

“It’s an uncontrolled Netanyahu that will drag us all down with him. The entire country,” said one of them to his colleagues in frustration this week after the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

In one sense, he’s right: Netanyahu the defendant, with criminal cases against him both in Israel and internationally and increasingly dependent on the most extreme players in Israeli politics, no longer has much to lose. But he doesn’t plan on just dragging Israel down with him.

Netanyahu now has two goals. The first is to persuade Israelis that the international cases aren’t against him personally, because of how he chose to wage the war, but against all Israelis as a collective and as a nation.

The second is to launch a war of destruction to dismantle commonly agreed upon liberal norms and mechanisms. In other words, Netanyahu intends to turn the ICC arrest warrant against him into a global motion of no confidence against the international law and its institutions.

To render the ICC’s warrants meaningless, he doesn’t necessarily have to nullify them. He just needs to ensure that as many countries as possible refuse to enforce them – which would also threaten the foundation of the institution’s very existence.

To do so, Netanyahu will draw closer to the anti-liberal bloc of leaders he belongs to, and make maximum use of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House. His invitation from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a first step.  Netanyahu and Trump seek to convince their supporters that the domestic cases against them, prosecuted by “elite” institutions (“the deep state,”) are actually a declaration of war on those who voted for them, too, to justify the dismantling of these institutions.

In the same way, Netanyahu will try to turn his fight against international law into an aggressive delegitimization battle against what he will frame as the norms and institutions of a global liberal elite.

It’s no secret that some Western countries have their own unsettled accounts with international law, not least the U.S. It wasn’t hard to predict the Biden administration’s reaction to The Hague’s decisions. The reaction of Germany, Israel’s consistent ally in international institutions as of their historic relationship, was also expected.

The real question is how other signatories, especially European countries, will act. The arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant will become another proxy war between the liberal and anti-liberal forces in Europe – and Netanyahu will only seek to escalate it.

Within this geopolitical battle between values and great powers, the overwhelming majority of Israeli leaders and public will likely again ignore the facts and details.

More than anything, what most Israelis are unprepared to accept is that even the most justified of wars, like Israel’s war against Hamas after the October 7 attack, cannot and must not include deliberate mass attacks against innocent civilians, deportation, starvation and the denial of humanitarian necessities.

However, it seems that no one in Israel has investigated or plans to investigate the well-documented facts that are in the ICC’s possession.

In the coming days, the anti-Netanyahu camp will mainly emphasize his personal blame for the diplomatic crisis (“if only the hasbara was better!”), his opposition to a State Commission of Inquiry and his attacks against the judiciary, which has ostensibly damaged Israel’s ability to argue the principle of complementarity (Israel’s ability to investigate and do justice itself).

There is no better proof of the problem in this argument than the response by Israel’s Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to the decision in The Hague. Not just because of the irony in her remarks about the independence of the Israeli judiciary, at a time when the Netanyahu government is pointing a huge gun at her head, but also because, so far as is known, she has done nothing to date to independently investigate the serious suspicions.

An example of the utter disconnect between the Israeli government and the theoretical option of the principle of complementarity was also seen in Friday’s announcement by Defense Minister Israel Katz, that he will stop the use of administration detention against Jews in the West Bank.

Administrative detentions are indeed an improper practice, but Katz effectively announced official ethnic apartheid. Administrative detentions will be used – but only against Palestinians. Is that what a proper judiciary that can fairly investigate war crimes looks like?

The problem is that Katz is not the only one who is disconnected. The plague of apathy and blindness has spread in the past year to almost the entire population of the country, which has buried its head deep in the sand while repeating slogans about the war’s legitimacy.

The vast majority of Israelis have no idea what is being done in their name in Gaza (or in the West Bank). True, there are those who know but are indifferent, and those who know and are pleased. But the majority does not really know. Most of the Israeli media is complicit in this failure by deliberately concealing out of censorship, commercial or self-imposed.

The ICC is now giving Israelis a chance – apparently a final one – to sober up from this national blindness and seriously examine what has been happening in their name since the war began.

There’s another option besides burying our heads further into the sand, accusing the whole world of antisemitism and fiercely defending this extremist government of failures.

This article is reproduced in its entirety