OPINION: Can ICC endure Western influence to hold Israel accountable for war crimes in Gaza?

By Kungu Al-mahadi Adam

For two months now, the world has been witnessing some of the worst and deadly attacks on children and civilians in Gaza in contemporary times, committed with impunity by Israel.

Israeli operations in Gaza have been ruthless, killing upward of 17,000 Palestinians, including more than 7,000 children, displacing most of the strip’s inhabitants and razing much of its north.

Thousands of young men are now being rounded up, many of them stripped and taken to undisclosed locations.

For starters, the collective punishment of a civilian population amounts to a war crime under international law, as well as potentially a crime against humanity and the crime of genocide.

What we see in Palestine are heinous crimes of deliberate killings of civilians, hostage-taking, and collective punishment, which have no justification.

There are fears that Israel’s atrocities in Gaza may soon amount to genocide.

Israel has committed these crimes for decades and will continue so long as human rights and accountability are disregarded, and the world remains mute.

Despite the staggering civilian death toll and accusations of war crimes, Western states continue to actively support Israel.

In the third week of the war, the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Canada signed a joint statement reaffirming their support to Israel and its right to defend itself.

The US, Israel’s closest ally, firmly opposes any probe into the Palestinian situation and has routinely blocked international efforts to hold Israel accountable.

War crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which, in 2021, opened an investigation on war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The investigation prompted fierce opposition by Israel and the United States, neither of which are members of the court, and it has largely stalled.

It should be remembered that at the start of the ongoing assault on Palestine, Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Defence Minister, used genocidal language and ordered mass war crimes in the occupied Gaza Strip.

Gallant’s words were actually an admission of intent to commit crimes, something ICC should have immediately taken note of and acted, but alas, not even the international community did.

Instead, the Biden administration repeatedly pledged its support for Israel. The administration remains unbothered about Israel’s crimes against Palestinian civilians and children.

It is worth noting that last year, as Russia staged a special military operation in Ukraine, many pointed to what they regarded as war crimes.

The ICC, for its part, responded to the operation by immediately dispatching investigators there, leading to charges implicating Russian leadership all the way up to President Vladimir Putin earlier this year. But there was no such response following Israeli crimes in Gaza, including after military campaigns in 2018, 2021, and 2022 that left hundreds of Palestinian civilians dead.

Israel, which is not a member of the ICC, claims that the tribunal lacks the jurisdiction to investigate in the conflict because Palestine is not a sovereign state, a position that has been backed by the US.

Still, as a signatory to the Geneva Conventions, Israel is obligated to investigate and prosecute war crimes, including any committed by its own forces.

However, it refuses to cooperate with the criminal court and prevents the ICC investigation team from travelling to the country or entering Gaza.

In March 2021, the ICC’s former chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda launched a probe into Israel’s alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem dating back to 2014.

This came after conducting a meticulous preliminary examination over the course of six years, following an investigation commenced by the judicial body in 2009. But after Bensouda left office in June 2021, the court went quiet with her successor, Karim Ahmed Khan from Great Britain, clearly displaying how the Court is used by the U.S. and other Western powers to serve selfish interests of suffocating perceived rivals in the global South.

In fact, at the beginning of this month, Khan shocked the World when accepted an Israeli invitation to visit Israeli communities and areas that Hamas attacked on October 7, but declined an offer from Palestinians to visit the hundreds of illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and refugee camps in the occupied West Bank, a clear indicator that he not interested in seriously probing Israel, probably because of influence from western countries which total control the court.

The case of Palestine is the litmus test for the credibility of the ICC to prove that it is truly the world's criminal court. The court needs to show that it views Palestinians as equal human beings who deserve equal protections under international law.

The world has now seen and has a reason to confirm that the ICC can only 'bite' when the matter is not in the direct interest of the U.S. and its allies like Israel and yet, at such a time, the international community needed to do everything possible to press Israel to stop violating basic norms of humanitarian law, as well as to ensure they are not supporting it in a way that might render them complicit in violations.

Meanwhile, the world ought to rise and pile pressure on the U.S. controlled ICC to initiate investigations into the crimes, issue arrest warrants to perpetrators, and have justice served to the people of Palestine, and also prevail over related aggression in the future.

The writer is a Uganda journalist with a passion for current African affairs.