Malicious actors are exploiting the ICC and ICJ, and it will have implications far beyond the Middle East
The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan KC, announced last week that he is seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister. This is an extraordinary moment – potentially the first ever arrest warrant to be issued against the leader of a democratic Western nation.
The charge of crimes against humanity is exceptionally grave. It is one which the ICC has failed to apply even to Vladimir Putin (he faces the “lesser” charge of war crimes) despite Putin’s appalling invasion of Ukraine and the well-documented butchery committed by his brutal armed forces.
At precisely the same time Mr Khan made his announcement regarding Israel, he also said he intends to secure warrants for the leaders of the Hamas terrorist group. It is appalling that a moral equivalence has been drawn between a democratic nation fighting a defensive war against terrorists openly avowed to destroy it and a proscribed terrorist organisation. World leaders were quick in their condemnation of this manifestly unhelpful decision and the UK was right to join the criticism.
In the perverse otherworld view of the ICC, it is Israel’s leaders who are seeking “extermination”, “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population” and “starving” civilians. No impartial observer could reasonably conclude that Israeli leaders are committing such heinous crimes. On the contrary, Israel has made extensive efforts to facilitate humanitarian aid to Gaza’s civilian population, totalling more than 550,000 tonnes since October 7. It has also repaired water pipes, power lines and humanitarian aid crossings which were deliberately destroyed by Hamas on that dark day.
What other country is expected to support and sustain those trying to destroy it? But Israel rightly does all this despite the knowledge that Hamas misappropriates much of this aid and despite the presence of terrorists within UN aid facilities in Gaza.
Israel’s military has made exhaustive efforts to avoid civilian casualties. The UN’s numbers indicate that the ratio of civilians to combatants killed in Gaza is close to 1:1 – almost unprecedented in urban warfare, far lower than the international average and lower than US and British operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Hamas’s deliberate strategy of embedding itself within urban areas means that civilians will be killed and civilian infrastructure destroyed.
Many women and children have tragically been caught up in the fighting, though it is worth noting that the UN has now halved the number of identified civilians killed in Gaza. Of course, Hamas’s casualty figures were always fictional; a terror group seeking to win a PR war was inevitably going to propagandise casualty figures. The UK Statistics Authority has warned people in public life to be cautious.
The lower rate of civilian casualties that Professor John Spencer from West Point Academy has referred to is because protection of innocent life is at the forefront of the Israel Defence Forces’ operating guidelines. Independent legal advisors within the IDF issue advice on the legality of every airstrike. Israel routinely aborts strikes when it is identified that civilians are present and continues to make every effort possible to evacuate Gaza’s civilian population from combat areas.
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