The ICC’s Vendetta against Israel Won’t Help Palestinians or Strengthen International Law

Feb. 12 2021

While the International Criminal Court (ICC) has proved itself unable or unwilling to weigh in on the Chinese government’s brutal persecution of the Uighurs, Bashar al-Assad’s bloody war against his own people, or the depredations of Islamic State, it last week ruled that its authority extends to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The Scottish journalist Stephen Daisley observes:

This is judicial activism on a global scale and the UK should oppose it—and loudly—for two reasons. For one, there is the principle that a body created by a treaty should not claim powers which that treaty does not grant it. The Rome Statute does not empower the ICC to prosecute non-party states, except where such states “accept the exercise of jurisdiction by the court.”

Instead the Rome Statute gives the court jurisdiction where “the state on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred” is a “party to this statute,” but Israel has not ratified the statute and the Palestinian Authority, which acceded in 2015, is not a state. If the UK is for international law, it should be against this lawless behavior.

No doubt the court yearns to see an end to the [Israel-Palestinian] conflict, as do we all, but its apparent attempt to jump-start that process is as knuckle-headed as Barack Obama’s “daylight” strategy towards Israel or Downing Street’s endless scolding over settlements. . . . It is for the Palestinians to claim their own sovereignty at the negotiating table.

An ICC vendetta against Israel will not achieve dignity, prosperity, and self-determination for the Palestinians. It will only promote the suspicion that the ICC imperils national sovereignty in pursuit of political ends.

Read more at Spectator

More about: ICC, International Law, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023