As the carnage and destruction wrought by Israel in Gaza becomes even more evident, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly appealed to U.S. lawmakers to help Israel avoid being indicted for war crimes at the International Criminal Court.
According to the New York Post, Netanyahu’s appeal occurred during the ceasefire, when a visiting U.S. delegation arrived in Tel Aviv to discuss Israel’s neverending “security concerns.” With rhetoric reminiscent of the usual Zionist glorification, Netanyahu insisted that Israel resorted to “extraordinary measures” to avoid targeting civilians.
Rep. Steve Israel of New York told The Post: “The prime minister asked us to work together to ensure that this strategy of going to the ICC does not succeed.”
Netanyahu also reportedly requested that the U.S. delegation ensures the continuation of Israeli propaganda by influencing public opinion to the view that “war crimes were not committed by Israel, they were committed by Hamas. And that Israel should not be held to a double standard.”
Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem on Aug. 6, Netanyahu expounded upon the “human shields” theory and the “imperative to tackle terrorism” — both are figments of the imagination and propaganda, but still concepts that have influenced mainstream media and its distorted reporting on Israel’s colonial massacre.
Israel’s settler-colonial population is ensconced in safety and protection, so it takes an exercise in the imagination to conjure up the alleged threats attributed to Hamas. When Netanyahu says over 3,500 rockets were fired into Israel, he conveniently fails to mention the Palestinian right to armed resistance against colonial domination as enshrined in international law. These rockets, he maintains, are ample excuse for murdering and dismembering Palestinian civilians incarcerated within Gaza — a condition created by the settler-colonial state itself in its quest to slowly eliminate the Palestinian population.
Even though Israel is the entity which created the conditions for rockets to be fired in the first place, Operation Protective Edge is deemed by the settler-colonial state to have remained within the confines of alleged proportionality, prompting Netanyahu to embark upon his definition of “disproportionality.”
“Let me tell you what I think disproportionality is. It’s not acting to defend your people and giving the terrorists a license to kill,” he told members of the foreign press gathered in Jerusalem.
A more thorough analysis of disproportionality should go back to the initiation of Zionist colonization of Palestine in 1882, then moving forward to incorporate every step taken by Zionists and the international community to render the fictitious state of Israel a reality by the United Nations’ compromised standards. It is colonization — including intentional political violence — that should be viewed as disproportionate. Once this fact has been asserted, moving on to the obvious premise that Palestinian resistance is a legitimate response to Israel’s terrorist, colonial violence should provide solid foundation for Israel’s indictment at the ICC.
There are several issues blocking such an unprecedented event from occurring, though. Primarily, the Palestinian Authority has constantly fluctuated in its intentions to seek international legitimacy through international law — in particular through becoming a signatory to the Rome Statute, which specifies a list of war crimes for which countries can be indicted at the ICC. However, the negotiations that collapsed earlier this year took place upon prior agreement with PA President Mahmoud Abbas that Palestine would not resort to international organizations to gain any form of legitimacy. Since then, demands to resort to the ICC have been resounding, creating more divergences with regards to legitimacy, international complicity, necessity and the force of public opinion.
Ma’an News Agency reported that Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki has pointed to the ICC as the next step. On Saturday, during a trip to Bogota, he told AFP that he had just been at The Hague, asking the ICC “to start an official investigation, to see if what Israel has done in the past 22 days reaches the level of war crimes.” (Though the ICC’s website features a news brief confirming al-Maliki’s visit, it also states that there has been no request to initiate an investigation.)
The Palestinian Authority’s subservience to both Israel and the international community is not a favorable indication of its intent to prosecute the settler-colonial state for war crimes. In faithfully adhering to its role as a collaborator in security coordination with Israel, the Palestinian Authority’s allegiance has evidently favored the oppressors of Palestinians. This fact alone weakens any possible recourse for international recognition or an indictment of Israel. The Palestinian Authority’s competency in betraying Palestinians does not extend to the imperialist powers it has subjugated itself to.
Additionally, the structure of international organizations is an extension of imperialism. The alleged impartiality and fairness of the courts are best interpreted through the dynamics that govern impunity. This summarizes the near-improbability that the real perpetrators of war crimes, such as Israel and the United States, would be investigated for the atrocities committed against resilient populations. Recourse to the ICC does not constitute an unbiased investigation, but rather an added struggle against imperialist structures which the Palestinian Authority will find almost impossible to fulfil — the main reason being its complicity with the settler-colonial state, as well as its inability to utilize international platforms as arenas to highlight the legitimacy of Palestinian armed resistance.
While the remote threat of international criminal indictment remains a reality for Netanyahu and his allies, a number of factors make such an event unlikely. Calls for international investigations are being skilfully woven into Israel’s propaganda machine to the detriment of Palestinians, adding to the humiliation exacerbated by the Palestinian Authority, an organization that panders to every imperialist whim.