The Hague prosecution opens an investigation against Israel and Hamas for war crimes in Palestine

Before leaving her post in three months, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, announced on Wednesday the opening of an investigation into war crimes committed in Palestine from June 2014 that implicates Israel and the Gaza Strip militias, led by Hamas.

Hundreds of senior Israeli political and military officials may be involved for the first time in international criminal justice inquiries.

The decision taken after five years of preliminary proceedings has been received with concern by the Government of Israel, which rejects the jurisdiction of the Hague judges, while it has received the welcome, as “a long-awaited step”, from the Palestinians.

When communicating the formal opening of the case, after the court declared itself competent a month ago, Bensouda stated in an official statement that the investigation would be carried out "with independence, impartiality, objectivity and without fear or favoritism."

On June 14, she will be relieved of her post by the British jurist Karim Khan.

At the end of 2019, the Hague prosecutor's office already anticipated that it had found “rational evidence” to examine Israel's military actions in the 2014 Gaza war and the construction of settlements for settlers in the West Bank as alleged war crimes.

"Our central concern must be the victims of the crimes," proclaimed the outgoing prosecutor.

"This department will act in accordance with the principles of impartiality," he emphasized.

The prosecution will now have to turn to the parties involved in the investigation to verify that their judicial systems have not examined war crimes complaints.

The opening of an investigation has fallen like a cold water jug ​​on Israel, which is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty that founded the ICC in 2002. The Israeli government is challenging The Hague's jurisdiction over Palestine by consider that it is not an internationally recognized State.

Since July 2015, however, the Palestinian Authority has fully adhered to the Rome Statute.

The jurisdiction for the prosecution's inquiries also extends to the actions of Palestinian militias such as Hamas or the Islamic Jihad in the Gaza war, in July and August 2014.

"I am convinced that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem," Bensouda concluded in December 2019, before asking the judges to rule in advance on their "territorial jurisdiction." given the "highly disputed legal and factual situation" existing on the ground.

The decision, signed by two of the three judges in the preliminary questions chamber in The Hague, took more than a year to be adopted.

Decision "skewed by anti-Semitism"

"We are going to fight for the truth," declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has accused the ICC of "attacking Israel."

"The biased decision is pure anti-Semitism," the head of the Israeli Government thundered in a statement.

"Without any jurisdiction, it has decided that our brave soldiers, who fight against terrorism, are the terrorists (...) and that when we build a house in our eternal capital, Jerusalem, it is a war crime", he has sentenced.

Israel's Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, told Reuters on Tuesday that hundreds of senior Israeli officials could be investigated by the ICC and guaranteed that all will receive legal protection from the government.

Gantz, who was the army chief general who led the military operations in Gaza in 2014, said verbatim: “I was never afraid to cross enemy lines.

I will remain firm in the position that I must maintain ”.

The Palestinian Authority Foreign Ministry in the West Bank celebrated in a statement that an end to impunity for Israel and be held "accountable to justice."

The Hague prosecution's decision was also welcomed in the Gaza Strip by Hamas, despite being singled out in the investigation.

The Islamist movement affirms that all its armed actions responded to the legitimate exercise of “resistance to the occupation”.

Following the incorporation of Palestine into international criminal jurisdiction, in July 2015, the Hague prosecutor's office initiated preliminary proceedings on the expansion of settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and on the 2014 war in Gaza. (In which 2,500 Palestinians were killed, two-thirds of them civilians; and 73 Israelis, of whom 67 were military).

The investigations in the Strip also implicate the militias of the enclave for the massive firing of rockets indiscriminately against Israeli populations during the conflict.

• The Justice of The Hague declares itself competent to investigate war crimes in Palestine

These proceedings, initiated from documents provided by the Palestinian Authority and various NGOs, can also be expanded to include a Palestinian lawsuit for the death of nearly 300 protesters as a result of the shooting by Israeli troops on the Gaza border between 2018 and 2019. , as well as the threat of eviction and expulsion from their homes by Bedouin families in the West Bank.

Above all, the Israeli Government fears that the opening of an international criminal investigation could lead to indictments against Israeli military and civilian officials as suspected of having committed war crimes or crimes against humanity in the Palestinian territories.

Consequently, they can be arrested abroad on the basis of arrest warrants issued by The Hague.

The ICC lacks its own police force to enforce its resolutions and requires the cooperation of the States to carry them out.

It remains to be seen how the Democrat Joe Biden's Administration will react to the opening of the war crimes investigation.

The former president of the United States, Republican Donald Trump, made a common front with Israel before The Hague and announced sanctions to its judges and prosecutors.