Beniamín Netanyahu’s great Western support could turn against him. The 124 countries that have ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a group of which neither Israel nor the United States are part, would be obliged to arrest the Israeli prime minister for the violations perpetrated by the Israeli Army in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian civilians, if the information published by the Israeli media Haaretz is confirmed.
The ICC accusations do not appear to be anything new for Netanyahu, since in 2021 the international body opened an official investigation into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Based in The Hague (Netherlands), the ICC has operated since 2003 as a court of last resort that judges serious international crimes such as genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and replaces the ad hoc courts formed in the 1990s to address atrocity crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
In the more than 21 years that this supranational judicial body has been operating, 31 cases have been brought before the court, with some cases trying more than one suspect. 21 people have been held in the ICC detention center and have appeared in court, with sentences ranging between nine and 30 years in prison, although seventeen are still free today, and seven have had their charges dropped. due to his death.
As of today, the ICC is carrying out 17 investigations ranging from African states such as Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya to Venezuela, in Latin America and Asian nations such as Myanmar and the Philippines, in addition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
One notable fugitive is Russian President Vladimir Putin, charged with a war crime for illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine. The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin in March 2023, to which the Kremlin has repeatedly denied accusations that his forces committed atrocities during the invasion of kyiv.
Although the court has the support of more than 65% of the world’s states, with the entire European Union, other powers such as the United States, China and Russia are not members, arguing that the ICC could be used for politically motivated prosecutions. Israel is also not a member of the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction, although the Palestinian territories were admitted as a member state in 2015.
But since October last year, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan claimed the court had jurisdiction over any possible war crimes committed by Hamas fighters in Israel and by Israelis in the Gaza Strip.
