The ICC Issues Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant: Winning the Legitimacy War

EDITORIAL, 25 Nov 2024

#876 | Prof. Richard Falk – TRANSCEND Media Service

The ICC delayed the formal issuance of ‘arrest warrants’ for top Israeli political leaders directing the genocidal assault on Gaza for six months although it responded affirmatively to a comparable request involving Putin’s alleged criminality in Ukraine in less than a month after the Russian attack.

Double standards to be sure, yet ICC action is a welcome alternative to either denying the Chief Prosecutor’s recommendation of May 20 or delaying indefinitely to its decision on whether the arrest warrants should be issued. The ruling of ICC Pre-Trial Chamber 1 to issue arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant, in view of the overwhelming evidence of their responsibility for severe international crimes comes as big news. It is a mighty symbolic blow against geopolitical impunity and in favor of accountability.

If this ICC action is assessed by its ability to sway Israel’s short-term behavior in directions more in accord with international law, as well as to the majority views prevalent in the UN, the Global South, and world public opinion this ICC decision the cynical dismissal of Sub-Changer as ‘an empty gesture.’  Some argue that the tangible impact of arrest warrants, if any, will be to alter Netanyahu’s and Gallant’s future travel plans slightly. The decision obliges the 124 member states of the ICC to carry out arrests of these individuals should they be so bold as to venture onto their territory.

Non-parties, including the US, Russia, China, Israel and others are not subject to this enforcement obligation. We should remember that Palestine is a party to the ICC treaty and thus if either Netanyahu or Gallant were to set foot in the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Gaza, West Bank, and East Jerusalem the governmental authority in Ramallah would be legally obliged to make arrests. Yet it would test the bravery of the Palestinian Authority far beyond its past behavior if it dared arrest an Israeli leader, however clear the obligation and no matter how strong the evidence against him. This assessment of tangible effect misses the point of why this is an historically significant development both for the Palestinian struggle and the credibility of the ICC.

Before putting forth an argument as to why this ICC move is a historic step, it seems responsible to acknowledge several important limitations:

–First and foremost, although the Prosecutor’s recommendation to the Sub-Chamber of the ICC was made in May (or eight months after Oct. 8^th), it did not include even a mention of ‘genocide’ among the crimes attributed to these two leaders, which is of course the core criminality of the Israeli onslaught, as well as expressive of their role in the enactment of this ultimate international crime;

–Another notable limitation is the long ICC delay between recommending the arrest warrants and Sub-Chamber ruling. This was substantively inexcusable in view of the dire emergency conditions of devastation, famine, and suffering existing in Gaza during this interval, and aggravated by Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian assistance provided by UNRWA and other international aid and humanitarian organization to the Gazan civilian population in desperate need of food, fuel, electricity, potable water, medical supplies, and health workers.

–Also, the ICC decision remains subject to jurisdictional challenge once the arrest order has been finalized. The Nov 20 acceptance of jurisdiction is in a formal sense provisional as Israel’s objection to ICC jurisdictional authority was made prematurely, but can be made without prejudice despite its denial in the future now that the ICC has acted.

–Even in the highly unlikely event that arrests will be made, it is improbable that detention could be implemented, given the US Congressional legislation authorizing the use of force to liberate detainees from ICC captivity if US nationals or the accused as here are nationals of allies. There have been already intimations that some members of the US Senate and House will seek sanctions against the persons of the Chief Prosecutor, Karim Kahn, and the members of the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber. Such initiatives if actualized will further weaken the US reputation as supporter of the Rule of Law in international affairs.

Despite these formidable limitations, this invocation of the procedural authority of the ICC is itself a grim reminder to the world that accountability for international crimes should pertain to all governments and that the evidence against these two Israeli leaders has been assessed by objective and professionally qualified experts under the auspices of an international institution that is empowered by a widely ratified treaty to make a determination on the legal appropriateness of making such a controversial decision.

The ICC like the ICJ has no independent enforcement capability other than compliance by member states, but because the ICC is not part of the UN it at least are rendered, unlike the ICJ without being subject for enforcement to a right of veto that has paralyzed the UN Security Council throughout this period of Gaza violence. This does not mean that implementation will follow or that prosecution will go forward much less that future findings of guilt will be respected, in the event that they occur, as the older more venerable ICJ has found out to its dismay since its establishment in 1945. But both the ICC and ICJ in their judicial proceeding are formally free from ‘the primacy of geopolitics’ that so often overrides the relevance of international law or the UN Charter in other non-judicial venues.

An outcome of the sort that the ICC reached regarding the arrest warrants is a direct and authoritative application of international law, and in that sense produces no counter-arguments but it is subject to crude denunciations. Netanyahu calls the ICC ruling ‘absurd’ and a manifestation of antisemitism, while the American lame duck president, Joe Biden, has called the issuance of these arrest warrants as ‘outrageous’ but never tells the world why. This kind of verbal Israeli lashing of the ICC has in the past been directed at the UN itself in response to criticism of its policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The lasting and redeeming significance of the issuance of the arrest warrants is to help Palestine win the ‘legitimacy war’ being waged to control the high ground of law, morality, and public discourse. Political realists that continue to dominate foreign policy elites in important states dismiss international law and normative considerations in global security and geopolitically inflamed settings as a misleading distraction to interactions that are best guided, and in any event will be determined by the interplay of military force.

Such thinking overlooks the reverse experience of all anti-colonial wars in the prior century that were won by the weaker side militarily. The US should have learned this lesson in the Vietnam War in which it dominated air, sea, and land battlefields and yet lost the war. The weaker side militarily prevailed, that is, it prevailed in the legitimacy war, which more often than not has controlled the political outcomes since 1945 in internal conflicts waged around issues of national and ideological identity of sovereign states.  These outcomes reflect the decline in the historical agency of militarism even in the face of many seemingly breakthrough technological innovations in warfare on the part of aggressor states.

For this reason, yet mainly without this line of analysis, more and more close observers have come to the surprising conclusion that Israel has already lost the war, and in the process endangered its future security and prosperity, and possibly even its existence. In the end Palestinian resistance may achieve victory despite paying an unspeakable price exacted by such a horrifying genocidal assault. If this outcome comes to pass, one of the international factors that will be given attention is this ICC Sub-Chamber unanimous decision to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. In this defining sense the frustrations with implementation of these arrest warrants are not the end of the story, but are part of a larger historically unfolding narrative of ‘hope against hope.’

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Prof. Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, at Queen Mary University London, Research Associate the Orfalea Center of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Fellow of the Tellus Institute. He directed the project on Global Climate Change, Human Security, and Democracy at UCSB and formerly served as director the North American group in the World Order Models Project. Between 2008 and 2014, Falk served as UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine. His book, (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), proposes a value-oriented assessment of world order and future trends. His most recent books are Power Shift (2016); Revisiting the Vietnam War (2017); On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (2019); and On Public Imagination: A Political & Ethical Imperative, ed. with Victor Faessel & Michael Curtin (2019). He is the author or coauthor of other books, including Religion and Humane Global Governance (2001), Explorations at the Edge of Time (1993), Revolutionaries and Functionaries (1988), The Promise of World Order (1988), Indefensible Weapons (with Robert Jay Lifton, 1983), A Study of Future Worlds (1975), and This Endangered Planet (1972). His memoir, Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim was published in March 2021 and received an award from Global Policy Institute at Loyala Marymount University as ‘the best book of 2021.’ He has been nominated frequently for the Nobel Peace Prize since 2009.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 25 Nov 2024.

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