LONDON: Israel has entered a new era in its relations with its western allies, including its chief backer, the United States.
There was uproar in Jerusalem last Monday after the International Criminal Court announced that it could soon issue arrest warrants for Israel and Hamas leaders. Named were Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohhamed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh. Hamas is already considered an international terrorist group by the West. Both Sinwar and Deif are believed to be hiding in Gaza, while Haniyeh, the supreme leader of the Islamic militant group is based in Qatar.
Israeli officials and politicians across the board reacted with anger and outrage after the ICC’s announcement, even though it has long been speculated, not least in comments from Netanyahu himself, that ICC warrants might be imminent. Foreign Minister Israel Katz issued a statement calling the warrants an “unrestrained direct attack” on the victims on Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and the hostages still being held in Gaza. “At the same time that the murderers and rapists of Hamas are committing crimes against humanity, against our brothers and sisters, the chief prosecutor of the ICC mentions in the same breath the prime minister and defence minister of Israel alongside the abominable Nazi monsters of Hamas—a historic disgrace that will be remembered forever by history,” he claimed.
Others queued up to add their fury. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog said the court’s move was “beyond outrageous.” War cabinet minister Benny Ganz called the move “a crime of historic proportions”, and Justice Minister Yariv Levin said the ICC move was one of the “biggest moral disgraces in human history.” Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the news that he might face an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in a bitter personal attack on the chief prosecutor of the ICC, Karim Khan, accusing him of being one of the “great anti-Semites in modern times.” Mr Khan, he said, was like the judges in Nazi Germany who denied Jews basic rights and enabled the Holocaust. His decision to seek arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister and defence minister was “callously pouring gasoline on the fires of anti-Semitism that are raging around the world.”
Few, if any, were surprised by the outbursts. After all, they came from politicians who regularly use trigger words such as Nazi, anti-Semitic, and Holocaust to shower on anyone who dares to criticise them. Any criticism of Israel’s activity in Gaza and the West Bank inevitably receives an outburst of being anti-Semitic, even though it is usually addressed at Israel and not the Jews. None of the angry Israeli politicians appeared to have read the pages of carefully chosen legal language in the statement issued by Mr Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor who is a British King’s Council. Word by word, line by line, they add up to a devastating series of allegations against the Hamas leaders as well as Netanyahu and Gallant.
In his statement Khan acknowledged the horrific events on 7th October when “the Jewish people were ripped from their bedrooms, from their homes, from the different kibbutzim in Israel”, adding that “people had suffered enormously.” He had seen “the devastating scenes of these attacks and the profound impact of the unconscionable crimes charged in the applications”.
Apropos Hamas, Khan said that warrants were being sought for the three leaders with charges including extermination, murder, the taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention. Speaking with survivors he said “I heard how the love within a family, the deepest bonds between a parent and a child, were contorted to inflict unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness. These acts demand accountability.”
Turning to the warrants applied for Netanyahu and Gallant, Khan said the charges include “crimes of causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, and deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.” On Israel’s actions, Khan added in a statement that the “effects of the use of starvation as a method of warfare, together with other attacks and collective punishment against the civilian population of Gaza are acute, visible and widely known. They include malnutrition, dehydration, profound suffering and an increasing number of deaths among the Palestinian population, including babies, other children and women.”
As Israel sought to contain the fallout from the move, three European countries, Belgium, Slovenia and France (a key ally) each said on Monday that they backed the decision by the ICC. Israel still has the support of its top ally, the United States, as well as other western countries that spoke out against the ICC decision. While no one faces imminent arrest, the announcement deepens Israel’s global isolation at a time when it is facing growing criticism from even its closest allies over the war in Gaza. The prosecutor must request the warrants from a pre-trial panel of three judges, who take on average two months to consider the evidence and determine if the proceedings can move forward. Israel is not a member of the court, and even if the warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution.
While Karim Khan was criticising Israel for starving Palestinians in Gaza, diplomatic efforts continued to be ineffective in securing access to get enough food into Gaza, with repeated military strikes on aid convoys. Land crossings are tightly controlled by the Israeli Defence Forces, with all vehicles carrying aid subject to exhaustive inspections to prevent the supply of ‘duel use’ items that might benefit Hamas or be used as a weapon. There are even reports of stone fruits being turned away for this reason!
An additional problem for relief lorries is that individual members of the Israel’s security force are tipping off far-right Israeli activists and settlers to the location of aid trucks delivering the vital supplies to Gaza, enabling the groups to vandalise the convoys. This claim of collusion is supported by messages from internal chat groups as well as accounts from a number of witnesses and human rights activists. An Israeli group called ‘Tzav 9’ say they have been blocking trucks as they made their way through Israel since January, on the unverified grounds that the aid they carried was “hijacked” by Hama once it reached Gaza. Videos last week showed aid convoys blocked and vandalised by Israeli settlers throwing boxes of supplies to the ground. Photographs from the scene showed piles of damaged aid packages and trails of rice and flour across the road, with some lorries on fire. Palestinian lorry drivers delivering aid to Gaza have described barbaric scenes after their vehicles came under attack, claiming that Israeli soldiers escorting the convoy did nothing to intervene.
Another report which did little to enhance Israel’s image to the world was published by the BBC this week. Medical workers in Israel told reporters that Palestinian detainees from Gaza are routinely kept shackled to their beds, blindfolded, sometimes naked, and forced to wear nappies, a practice one medical worker said amounted to “torture.” An Israeli whistle-blower told the BBC that procedures in one medical hospital were routinely carried out without painkillers, causing an “unacceptable amount of pain” to detainees. One detainee, taken from Gaza for questioning by the Israeli army and later released, told the BBC his leg had to be amputated because he was denied treatment for an infected wound. A senior doctor working inside the military hospital at the centre of the allegations denied that any amputations were the direct result of conditions there, but described the shackles and other restraints used by guards as “dehumanisation.”
While arrest warrants are not convictions or a determination of guilt, they do reflect the evidence and the judgement of the prosecutor about the grounds for individual criminal responsibility. Defence Minister Gallant has already foolishly provided incriminating evidence to the ICC by his own words. Two days after the Hamas attack on 7th October, Gallant is on the record saying “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed…we are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.” Images of starving and desperate women and children in Gaza suggest that Gallant’s threat has materialised.
The prospect of their leaders appearing in the dock alongside the perpetrators of the massacre against them is unthinkable to Israelis. But it is a sign of horror with which the world has come to view their government’s devastating war in Gaza. Act two of the drama will play out in a few months when the three ICC judges decide on whether or not to issue the arrest warrants. But regardless of what this will be, Israel has entered a new era in its relations with its western allies, including its chief backer, the United States. This is a seminal moment for Israel. In the dock, there’s no going back.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Plymouth.