Although the news has barely made diffusion in Europe, Israeli media such as ‘Post’ Jerusalem present the news as a “Victory of Israel.” The appeal judges of the International Criminal Court have ordered an instruction panel to reconsider the appeal of Israel … Against the body’s jurisdiction over Gaza and the West Bank, which could lead to the end of the process to the revocation of the arrest warrant issued by this Court against the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The decision is produced in the middle of the ongoing litigation of Israel’s statement that the Court did not have the legal authority to issue the arrest orders that formulated in November against Netanyahu and against the former Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant. In such orders it is claimed that Netanyahu and Gallant are responsible for crimes against humanity in Gaza, but Israel, who is not a member of the International Criminal Court and rejects his jurisdiction, strongly denies the accusations and has requested in a appeal that arrest orders are suspended.
Court judges based in The Hague They initially dismissed that request submitted in September, before the orders were issued, and which was rejected two months later. The appeal judges have now admitted, however, that in their written decision the instruction panel “made an error of right not to sufficiently address Israel’s argument that he was authorized to present a jurisdictional challenge” in accordance with the Rome Statute, which is the founding treaty of the Court. Based on this assessment, they have ordered the instructional judges that they issue a “new ruling on the bottom of Israel’s challenge to the jurisdiction of the Court.” The CPI prosecutor’s office has recognized the decision of the Appeals Chamber and is currently reviewing the ruling, although it has not specified a period for reconsideration.
Without being part of the Rome Statute
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar has declared that arrest orders were illegally issued and are “void and without effect.” «We said it from the beginning: the International Criminal Court in The Hague does not have, and never had, jurisdiction to issue arrest orders against the prime minister of Israel and its former Minister of Defense. Israel is not a member of the CPI and is not part of the ‘Rome Statute’, has insisted Saar, who has also denounced a differentiated treatment between Israeli defendants and Hamas leaders.
Together with the arrest orders against Israeli officials, the Court only issued one more for Mohammed Deif, head of the Hamas Navy Wing, for the attacks of October 7, 2023. The International Criminal Court claimed to have found reasonable reasons to believe that Deif was involved in cases of murder, rape, torture and take rinds, which constitute crimes of war and against humanity. The order was thus withdrawn in February, after his death was confirmed in an Israeli air attack.
Despite the arrest warrant against Benjamín Natanyahu, issued by the International Criminal Court of The Hague, the Israeli Prime Minister has officially traveled and without consequences to Hungary and the United States. He has also been officially invited by countries such as Poland and Germany. “We have talked about this several times, and I cannot imagine that there is an arrest in Germany,” said the still German chancellor Olaf Scholz after inviting Netanyahu to the acts that commemorate this year the 80th anniversary of the end of the Holocaust.
Trip to Azerbaijan
The incoming chancellor of Germany, the conservative Friedrich Merz, said after the February 23 elections that he would like to receive Netanyahu in Berlin, despite the order of the CPI. After Netanyahu called his office to congratulate him for his electoral victory, Merz said they even discussed a possible meeting after the formation of the new government. «I promised that we would find a way that he could visit Germany and go out again without being arrested. I think it is a completely absurd idea that an Israeli prime minister cannot visit the Federal Republic of Germany, can visit Germany, ”said Merz.
Netanyahu’s next trip abroad will have Azerbaijan, although the date has not been completed. He has planned to meet in Baku with President Ilham Aliyev, with whom he shares a long relationship marked by close cooperation. The visit occurs after the “technical conversations” held in Baku two weeks ago between the main Israeli and Turkish delegations, aimed at avoiding military friction between the two countries in Syrian territory and in which guarantees were obtained that the Israeli prime minister would not be arrested. The lack of execution power of the International Criminal Court, which has limited the real impact of its decisions since it issued its first arrest orders on July 8, 2005, has reached its greatest exponent with this case.
