Some opponents of the judicial reforms proposed by the current Israeli government have asserted that their passage will expose current and former members of the IDF to prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC). If Israel allows its elected legislators to select judges and forbids its Supreme Court from revoking laws on a whim—the anti-reformists claim—the ICC will determine that Israel is incapable of prosecuting crimes on its own, and will therefore assert its jurisdiction. Eugene Kontorovich and Avraham Shalev are unconvinced:

The ICC has no authority over Israeli soldiers, regardless of the details of Israel’s legal system, for one simple reason: the court only has jurisdiction over countries that accept its jurisdiction by ratifying its constitutive treaty, known as the Rome Convention. . . . Israel, like its allies, the United States and India, has never joined the ICC, out of longstanding concerns about [its] systemic bias. The only way the court could exercise jurisdiction over Israeli nationals is in the case of war crimes committed in the territory of a state party, a situation that simply does not arise.

Assuming the ICC had jurisdiction, it only prosecutes where the home state is “unable or unwilling” to investigate or prosecute a crime. [This principle, known as the] complementarity doctrine, in no way relates to the method of judicial selection. Indeed, it does not refer to courts at all, but to the “unwillingness” of the “state” to prosecute, which focuses primarily on the executive branch. The proposed reforms do not involve Israel’s criminal justice system, its independence, or the ability of prosecutors to prosecute offences committed by its soldiers.

Even Israel’s present judicial system would not satisfy the ICC’s views of what complementarity requires, however. Foremost among the supposed crimes the ICC is investigating [is] the supposed crime of allowing Jews to live in Judea and Samaria. Israel’s Supreme Court, however, has never treated this as a criminal issue.

The rhetoric about the ICC in the judicial-reform debate gives the body far more respect and formidability than it deserves.

With the IDF engaged in ground maneuvers in both northern and southern Gaza, and a plan about to go into effect next week that would separate more than 100,000 civilians from Hamas’s control, an end to the war may at last be in sight. Yet there seems to be no agreement within Israel, or without, about what should become of the territory. Efraim Inbar assesses the various proposals, from Donald Trump’s plan to remove the population entirely, to the Israeli far-right’s desire to settle the Strip with Jews, to the internationally supported proposal to place Gaza under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA)—and exposes the fatal flaws of each. He therefore tries to reframe the problem:

[M]any Arab states have failed to establish a monopoly on the use of force within their borders. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Sudan all suffer from civil wars or armed militias that do not obey the central government.

Perhaps Israel needs to get used to the idea that in the absence of an entity willing to take Gaza under its wing, chaos will prevail there. This is less terrible than people may think. Chaos would allow Israel to establish buffer zones along the Gaza border without interference. Any entity controlling Gaza would oppose such measures and would resist necessary Israeli measures to reduce terrorism. Chaos may also encourage emigration.

Israel is doomed to live with bad neighbors for the foreseeable future. There is no way to ensure zero terrorism. Israel should avoid adopting a policy of containment and should constantly “mow the grass” to minimize the chances of a major threat emerging across the border. Periodic conflicts may be necessary. If the Jews want a state in their homeland, they need to internalize that Israel will have to live by the sword for many more years.