ICC must take action on Israel war crimes

It is a grave injustice that the International Criminal Court has been dissuaded from investigating Israel for its war crimes in Gaza throughout the assault in 2008-2009 during what Israel called ‘Operation Iron Lead’. Both the current ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda and Luis Moreno Ocampo, who was prosecutor at the time of the 2009 Palestinian request, have failed to take action in response to a petition from the Palestinians.

Today, there is renewed urgency in getting the ICC to investigate Israel as a whole range of new war crimes have been committed during the current assault on Gaza. There are two separate issues of the ICC refusing to take action and both need to be addressed. The first is why did the ICC not investigate the 2009 atrocities, and the second is why is the ICC refusing to investigate the current atrocities in 2014?

An investigation by the Guardian newspaper makes clear that exceptional pressure from Israel and its western allies stopped the ICC from looking into the 2009 war crimes, including threats to stop the financial subsidies to Palestine and to the ICC if the investigation went ahead.

And now the ICC prosecutors are hiding behind a legal nicety in refusing to look into the current atrocities when they argue that the first complaint was lodged with the Court in 2009 before the Palestinians were recognised as a non-member observer state at the United Nations in 2012, and therefore a new complaint now has to be lodged in the name of the new Palestinian state.

More than 2,000 Palestinians have been killed and if the ceasefire collapses, many more will be slaughtered. Women and children are dead, and thousands of homes have been reduced to rubble. The unrelenting Israeli assault does not permit lawyers sitting in comfort outside Gaza to quibble. They need to recognise their wider responsibilities to the human race and restore the good standing of the court.

In addition, those countries that threatened to withhold funds must be named and shamed. The world needs an effective International Criminal Court, and it has to take a global view, not one just focused on Africa and the Middle East.