ICC arrest warrants against Israel get blocked by Britain

Right, so you might have been thinking to yourself, those arrest warrants that the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan had applied for were taking a long time to materialise. Well it looks like the UK government has stepped in with an attempt to block the issuing of these warrants, by questioning the legality of the matter, by questioning whether the ICC actually has jurisdiction here and unfortunately the ICC judge presiding over this case has decided to allow the UK to present evidence to try and make it’s case, which seems like one heck of a stretch to me, but it does go a long way to underline just how far this current government will go to try and get Israel off the hook despite meting out getting on for 10 months of genocide.
Right, so the UK government, into it’s almost certain last week of existence in it’s current form anyway, has deployed it’s lawyers to try and save the bacon of Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence secretary Yoav Gallant, following the Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, himself British, applying for arrest warrants against the two men, accusing them both of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And we’ve only just got wind of this, despite the government issuing it’s claim to the court back on the 10th of this month, despite having until the 12th July to do so, that pesky matter of a General Election that the Conservative Party are almost certain to lose, but it will now delay the issuing of these arrest warrants, should the UK petition fail, by at least a month. We’ve in fact only got wind of this application, made in secret because the election is coming so in light of that, the court has unsealed the application now, in order to ensure it get’s heard, having been made it must be heard, but the current government must still technically be in power I presume for the application to retain any semblance of validity.
Now to my mind the legal challenge from the UK has problems, but this is what UK lawyers are attempting to present.
The UK lawyers are essentially questioning whether the ICC can issue arrest warrants to Israelis, on one hand since Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the foundational documents of the International Criminal Court. By agreeing to be bound to the Statutes, you become subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC, but also because of the Oslo Accords. Now these are a set of agreements basically, mediated by Norway, hence the name, between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation organisation, the PLO aimed it was hoped to result in a two state solution, whereby the PLO would recognise Israel and Israel would recognise the PLO as representatives of the Palestinian people. It led to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, which operates self rule over some 40% of the West Bank, areas that Israel call Area’s A & B, whereas they have control over the remaining 60%, called Area C, which has been in the news lately and covered in another video, because Israel’s hard right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has now taken power to build new illegal settlements in Area C, but that’s another video.
Essentially it gave Palestinians a semblance of self rule over 40% of the West Bank. You will note, they have no authority in Gaza, although Gaza is referred to in the Oslo Accords, because Gaza came to be run by a Hamas government elected in 2006. My impression here and I’m no legal expert at all, let alone international humanitarian law, is that if what Israel had been doing over the last 10 months nearly had been happening in the West Bank, and indeed we have been seeing atrocities occurring there, then the argument made by UK lawyers might actually be stronger, but since the case Karim Khan and his team have put together, which has not been rushed, he’s come in for some flak, not least by me, for how long he seemed to be taking to make any moves to prosecute anyone involved, whereas the Internation Court of Justice, also based in the Hague, was hearing a lot of cases brought before it in relation to the genocide in Gaza, not least that brought by South Africa against Israel, but matter of jurisdiction has been the reason why Khan took his time. That had to be proven, because although Israel are not signed up to the Rome Statutes, Palestine is, and, with the backing of international humanitarian law experts, including some from the UK as well, Khan believes the case for jurisdiction has been proven, because Israel, although not signatories to the ICC are attacking part of a state that is, the State of Palestine, and are attacking within and frankly if that doesn’t give such a court jurisdiction to prosecute the aggressors, whoever they are, what does? Frankly if the ICC rules against it’s own Chief Prosecutor and with the UK lawyers trying to save Netanyahu and Gallant, what is the point of the ICC? What is the point of membership? Essentially, it would be putting Israel above international law and giving them carte blanche to attack an ICC member state, knowing the ICC can’t prosecute them. That is a stupendously stupid position to end up in and all to save the reputations of two genocidal maniacs.
Coming to the matter of Gaza specifically, as opposed to those self running areas of the West Bank, in 2021, a pre-trial chamber of the ICC did decide that the court’s jurisdiction did extend to Gaza, which should really be the end of the argument, the signatories to the ICC were the Palestinian Authority and not Hamas, but it is on the matter of those Oslo Accords that the UK are clinging to, that they say excuses Israel and demonstrates that the ICC has no jurisdiction and although those Accords only apply to Israel and Palestine, the precedent would be set to excuse Israeli atrocity elsewhere.
Personally I cannot see how the Oslo Accords trump the Rome Statutes, because surely where the jurisdiction of the ICC comes under question, nothing trumps the foundational documents of the court itself. Palestine as a signatory, with jurisdiction over Gaza proven, should be enough and the fact the ICC issues an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, when Russia is also not a signatory, for the forced deportation, the war crime of forced displacement, of children from Ukraine, who are signatories, into the Russian Federation. How is this situation different other than the West hates the oppressor in that instance, but when it comes to Israel, the West is on the side of the oppressor, with the US under Biden, for now anyway after his performance the other night, even threatening sanctions against the ICC for doing their job, though of the course the US are not signatories either, frankly it is in my view an acknowledgement of being a global pariah and complete wrong-un to not be signatories of the ICC, what is it about being held to international law you are afraid of if you are a just and moral government after all?
The ICC established jurisdiction in Palestine already, established that this covers Gaza already, so why let the UK put them under legal pressure by allowing this questioning of the legality take place? Is it really the UK putting them under pressure or the US using the UK as a proxy? Let’s face it when the US says jump our politicians go how high after all, but when the matter of that Putin arrest warrant is an example that can be pointed to in such a similar context, for Israel to be let off the hook here, would be catastrophically damaging to the reputation of the court and would be yet one more example of Western backed pressure for its allies winning out. Functionally the organisation would be rendered utterly pointless if it cannot stand up for it’s own member states in the face of pressure from a non member state as many believe the US are driving this via the UK, who are Rome Statute signatories and in which case would be putting the so called ‘special relationship’ ahead of legally binding responsibilities they are signed up to, our UK governments time after time really are global pariahs aren’t they? They are an embarrassment to me and although Labour saying they would follow any legal advice on the matter of Israeli arms sales and want to examine the legal advice the Tories claim to be following but refuse to make public, or share with other parties, nothing suspicious about that whatsoever of course, who would believe Labour on this given who they are led by and why should it take a piece of legal advice to reach such a decision when we have literally seen what Israel have been doing in Gaza for nearly 10 months has been grossly over the top, has been a genocide against mostly civilians, mostly women and children?
The ICC Chief Prosecutor wishes to mount a prosecution case against two men who have been seen to be drivers of the genocide in Gaza, have committed war crimes, of driving a strategy of starvation and should answer for this in The Hague on the charges they face, it should not be for a signatory country to the ICC to mount a legal challenge in order to excuse the actions of leaders of a non signatory state like Israel who have committed atrocity against a fellow signatory state, even if the UK refuses to recognise Palestinian statehood, it is legally recognised by the ICC. The UK are disgracing themselves, that they could be believably doing so on behalf of US and Israeli lobbying doubles that disgrace, but ultimately if there is any justice, if due process is carried out properly, I cannot by any stretch and especially with that precedent set with Putin, see how the ICC can possibly rule in the favour of this UK legal challenge. If it does, then the ICC is probably finished as Israel once more gets placed on a pedestal and treated differently to every other nation.
Meanwhile Israel is now planning to take over the West Bank, with those new powers awarded to Bezalel Smotrich, he’s now planning another 5 illegal settlements, which has begged the question from Francesca Albanese the UN Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories as to why an arrest warrant is not being pursued against Smotrich as well, well indeed, but you can find out the details of his latest plot in this video recommendation here, all done with Netanyahu’s support of course and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.