ICC can conduct a new survey of Israeli settlements

Such a probe is still a long way off, but the ICC moved a step closer on Friday as it cleared the way for prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to open a war crime probe against Israel and Palestinian militants.

Any investigation would look at Israeli military actions during the 2014 war in the Gaza Strip and protests over major borders that began in 2018. But the construction of an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and east of Jerusalem appears to be open to even harder study.

International law prevents a country from moving its civilians to owned land, making settlement-related costs easier to determine than the unfair use of power on the country. battlefield.

Bensouda confirmed in December 2019 that it believed there was a “reasonable basis” for opening a war crimes investigation on Israeli military and settlement activity. But first, she asked the court to decide if it had territorial jurisdiction.

In a 2-1 decision last week, judges gave her that sovereignty in the West Bank, east of Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are claiming all three areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War, for a future state.

The ruling did not open an investigation into war crimes. That is the decision of Bensouda. In a brief statement, she said she would closely examine the management before deciding how to proceed. That process could take months to play out.

Meanwhile, Israel has launched personal attacks against Bensouda and arrested the court for holding him to unfair standards. He also claims that the Palestinians have no state and accuses the court of plunging into political affairs.

Although Palestinians lack independence, the state of Palestine was adopted as an inviolable state by the UN General Assembly in 2012. Palestinians have used this renewed status to join dozens of international organizations. , including the ICC.

The Palestinians then asked the court to investigate Israeli military practices in Gaza and settlement activities in the West Bank and east of Jerusalem. They called for the investigation to be held back to June 13, 2014, a date coincided with the Israeli war with Gaza rulers from the Islamic militant group Hamas.

The international tribunal is set to become the ultimate court when countries’ own judicial systems cannot investigate or prosecute war crimes.

Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognize its authority, claiming it has a system of independent judgment at a global level. But the Palestinians say Israel cannot examine themselves and say Israel’s justice system is biased against them.

At this stage, Israel has little to fear. Friday’s decision was a shameful disgrace, but Israeli officials ’accusation remains speculative. But the ruling opens the door to a potentially difficult situation where former and endangered Israeli officials could be arrested if they go abroad. The Haaretz reported daily on Sunday that Israel is preparing to provide information to hundreds of current and former security officials, fearing they could be arrested.

In the Gaza war, more than 2,200 Palestinians, including nearly 1,500 civilians, were killed by Israeli fire, according to United Nations estimates. At least 73 people, including six civilians, were killed on the Israeli side, according to Israeli figures.

However, diagnosing war crimes can be difficult. Israel says it has acted against a nonstop rocket fire against its cities. He also accuses Hamas, which launched rockets from residential areas, of using civilians as human wings.

Israel also says its own judgment system is more than capable of self-examination. After the war, the army opened dozens of investigations into the conduct of its soldiers. While there were only a handful of convictions on small charges, that might be enough for Bensouda, which dropped a similar case against British troops in Iraq last year as UK authorities investigated.

It could be much more difficult to protect Israel’s ongoing settlement building in the West Bank, beginning fifty years ago.

Approximately 700,000 Israelis now live in cities built on the West Bank and east of Jerusalem. Settlements are widely viewed as illegal based on the principle of the Geneva Convention that property power is prohibited from moving its population to war-torn areas. Population movements are listed as a war crime in the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute.

“The issue of settlement is the biggest issue. This is the elephant in the room, ”said Yuval Shany, an expert in international law at the Israeli Institute for Democracy.

Israel annexed the east of Jerusalem after the 1967 war and considers the region an unstable part of its capital. He says the West Bank is a “controversy,” which has not been taken over, and that his race should be decided through negotiations.

But Israeli positions have little international support, especially since the departure of the settlement-friendly Trump administration last month.

Shany said the court’s ruling means Israel’s settlement policy could come under difficult scrutiny. “This basically reflects Israel’s political elite who have been part of a settlement policy to criminal proceedings before the court,” he said. “This is a major deterrent.”

In its 2019 decision, Bensouda found a reasonable basis for concluding that Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in Gaza were committing war crimes by inadvertently launching rockets. Israeli population centers.

Hamas welcomed the court ruling but declined to comment on the possibility that it could be the subject of a future investigation.

London-based rights group Amnesty International has said the rival Palestinian Authority, which administers autonomous enclaves in the West Bank, could also come under scrutiny over claims that it is torturing political rivals. and incited attacks against Israelis.