Every time the Worldwide Prison Courtroom (ICC) opens an investigation into an ongoing warfare, variations of the next query will inevitably be requested: Does the pursuit of accountability threat leaving the combatants with no incentive however to proceed the struggle?
The identical query is once more being requested now that ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has made the landmark resolution to request arrest warrants for high Israeli and Hamas leaders.
For years, I’ve tried to unravel what is commonly referred to as the “peace versus justice” debate. I wrote a e book about how that debate performed out with the ICC interventions in Libya and Uganda. I’ve additionally revealed findings on the peace-justice relationship in Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, and elsewhere. Whereas responses to the controversy are sometimes pushed extra by assumptions and hypotheticals than incontrovertible info, the fact is that there isn’t a particular key that helps unlock the connection between resolving wars and reaching accountability for wartime atrocities.
There isn’t a singular reply to this query that applies throughout completely different contexts. However right here are some things which can be true: The ICC can complicate peace negotiations. However extra “sophisticated” peace negotiations don’t essentially imply “worse” peace negotiations. Take Colombia, for instance, the place the ICC had a decade-long preliminary examination. Accountability processes negotiated in the course of the peace course of there translated into significant justice for lots of the wartime atrocities dedicated by the federal government and the insurgent group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Furthermore, for the ICC to undermine peace negotiations, there have to be a practical prospect of a peace course of within the first place. If such negotiations don’t exist, the declare that pursuing accountability will destroy them is probably going a pink herring, an argument supposed to defend the perpetrators of atrocities.
Within the battle between Israel and Palestine, there are not any peace negotiations for the ICC to complicate or undermine. Put one other manner, justice can’t undermine peace if peace isn’t on the desk.
Ongoing negotiations over the discharge of hostages and a ceasefire appear unlikely to be affected by ICC warrants on condition that they’ve been requested for leaders on each side and that the warfare already seems to be politically existential for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. And if the warrants have an effect on the talks, it could truly be optimistic. Yuval Shany, a world legislation professor at Hebrew College of Jerusalem, made exactly this level in response to the ICC prosecutor’s software for arrest warrants, saying it “could possibly be one other impetus for Israel to deliver the warfare to an finish, as a result of it does look like in a state of tailspin”. One other hope is that, as Israel is a democracy, ICC motion will encourage the individuals of Israel to deliver their authorities down and change it with one which seeks peace and Palestinian statehood – and which doesn’t so eagerly starve and slaughter civilians.
Past its potential penalties on ceasefire negotiations or a peace course of, might ICC motion make issues worse on the bottom, extra harmful and lethal for civilians?
Israel has stated it’ll punish Palestinians by, amongst different issues, freezing the switch of tax revenues it collects for the Palestinian Authority, if the ICC points arrest warrants. The USA, Canada and others have beforehand threatened Palestinians with penalties, together with the withdrawal of help to Palestinian humanitarian organisations, if the ICC have been to focus on Israeli leaders.
However that isn’t the ICC’s doing. Israel isn’t obliged to take out its discontent over arrest warrants by administering additional violence towards Palestinian civilians. If Israel chooses to answer the ICC warrants by denying help to Palestinians in Gaza, it gained’t be due to the ICC, however as a result of the Israeli authorities has normalised the hunger of civilians as an act of retaliation.
There isn’t a ethical, authorized or political justification for Israel’s allies punishing civilians for an investigation by the one credible, neutral and unbiased courtroom investigating atrocities towards Palestinian and Israeli victims of atrocity crimes. Penalising Palestinians for supporting recourse to worldwide legislation is reprehensible and itself an act against peace that needs to be condemned.
To those that say the ICC motion will make issues worse on the bottom, we must always ask: Worse than what? Greater than 35,000 individuals have been killed in Gaza within the seven months since October 7. The Worldwide Courtroom of Justice has stated there’s a believable case to be heard that Israel is committing genocide towards Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The United Nations has declared a famine in northern Gaza. Kids are being deliberately starved en masse. Each single college in Palestine has been systematically destroyed by Israeli forces, resulting in allegations of “scholasticide”. Most hospitals and sources of unpolluted consuming water have been destroyed or broken. Over a million individuals face the true menace of slaughter in Rafah.
The listing goes on. So, once more: How might the ICC presumably make issues worse? The final 20 years present how brutal and violent this battle is with out accountability. It’s now time to vary course. It’s improper to say that it’s accountability, reasonably than the perpetrators working the present, that may destroy possibilities at peace between Israel and Palestine.
Does this imply that arrest warrants will ship peace? After all not. The ICC isn’t within the enterprise of peacemaking. It’s within the enterprise of pursuing accountability for warfare crimes, crimes towards humanity and genocide. However watch out for self-serving claims by the supporters of the Israeli authorities that the ICC will undermine so-called “peace negotiations” that do little aside from promote the established order of impunity.
The ravenous individuals of Palestine have additionally been starved of entry to accountability. It won’t ship peace, however it’s past time to offer justice an opportunity.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
