US pressure could prevent ICC arrest warrants against Israeli politicians | News on the conflict between Israel and Palestine

When Israel began relentlessly bombing Gaza, Rasha Abu Shaban packed a few belongings and fled south with her parents and siblings.

Her brother stayed behind, afraid of never being able to return home.

Abu Shaban was in a refugee camp in Rafah when she learned that her house had been hit by an Israeli missile.

“My brother was killed in early November. He was in our house with another family who were displaced,” Abu Shaban, 38, told Al Jazeera. “We heard from (our neighbors) that an ambulance was prevented from reaching them.”

Abu Shaban is one of tens of thousands of Palestinians hungry for justice after losing loved ones, property and livelihoods in Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, which began after a Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities and military bases on October 7.

Some 1,139 Israelis were killed and 250 captured in that attack. Since then, Israel has killed more than 35,500 Palestinians in a campaign of violence that UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and other legal experts have called genocide.

On May 20, after months of gathering evidence, International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he had requested arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the head of the movement’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, and the head of the movement’s military wing, Mohammed Deif.

Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of using “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and “extermination,” “indiscriminately causing great suffering,” and deliberately carrying out “attacks against civilians.”

The Hamas leaders are accused of “extermination,” “hostage-taking,” and “torture.”

Khan’s announcement marks the first time an ICC chief prosecutor has sought to prosecute senior officials from a close US ally, a significant moment in the body’s history.

While Khan’s announcement gives Abu Shaban hope that justice may one day be done for the Palestinians, she also fears that Israel and the US will put pressure on ICC judges to reject Khan’s requests.

“I have mixed feelings,” she said. “I’m really worried that the US and Israel … will prevent the arrest warrants from being issued.”

US threats

Weeks before Khan’s announcement, senior Republican lawmakers in the United States had sent a letter to his office threatening to ban him and his family from entering the country if he sought arrest warrants against the Israeli leadership.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Khan said a senior U.S. elected official even told him the ICC was created “for Africa” ​​and for “thugs like (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” but not for Western or Western-backed leaders.

“We don’t see it that way,” Khan said. “This court is the legacy of Nuremberg, and this court is a sad indictment of humanity, and this court should be the triumph of law over might and brute force.”

US President Joe Biden criticized Khan’s decision and called the request to impeach Israeli politicians “outrageous.”

Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and several U.S. lawmakers said Khan drew a false moral equivalence between Hamas “terrorists” and democratically elected Israeli leaders.

Netanyahu, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have all made similar statements

But Adil Haque, a legal scholar at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said these arguments had no legal weight.

Israel’s allies were using a “rhetorical device” to undermine Khan’s equal application of international law, he said.

“The prosecutor is essentially saying that Israeli government officials have violated international law and that Hamas leaders have violated international law and that these violations are serious,” Haque told Al Jazeera.

“One can debate whether the charges against the Hamas leaders are better or worse (than those against the Israeli leaders), but that is not the prosecutor’s concern.”

Pressure and retaliation?

Three judges of the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court are currently deliberating on the issuance of arrest warrants.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch called on all ICC members to protect the court’s independence against “hostile pressure that is likely to increase as ICC judges consider Khan’s application.”

The United States – which is not a member of the Rome Statute, the treaty on which the ICC is based – is reportedly considering sanctions against court officials.

Three years ago, the Biden administration lifted sanctions imposed by former President Donald Trump on former ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other officials.

Trump was angry that Bensouda had launched investigations into Israeli abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories and abuses by US forces in Afghanistan.

Mark Kursten, a legal scholar at Fraser Valley University in Vancouver, believes the US could also try to exert direct pressure on Palestinian officials.

“I think (a possible US goal) would be to get the Palestinian Authority (PA) to stop cooperating with the ICC by getting them to stop submitting evidence,” said Mark Kursten, a legal scholar at the University of Fraser Valley in Vancouver.

Heidi Matthews, a legal scholar at York University in Toronto, added that the US has also pressured its Western allies in the past to get them to betray their commitments to the Rome Statute.

“From a foreign policy perspective, (Khan’s decision) will put long-time supporters of the court, who are also allies of Israel, in a position where they will have to choose between continuing to support the project of international criminal justice and justice or diplomatically protecting Israel,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I have lost my whole life”

Local human rights groups welcomed Khan’s move as a first step toward achieving justice for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, including those killed long before October 7.

A source at the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals from Israel, said Israel killed 1,462 Palestinian civilians in 51 days during its 2014 Gaza war.

An independent UN investigation concluded that there were “credible allegations of war crimes by Israel and armed Palestinian groups” in the war.

Four years later, Israeli troops also shot at unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza who had gathered along the fence with Israel as part of the Great March of Return.

“We believe that arrest warrants (from the ICC) can have a deterrent effect,” the Al Mezan Center source told Al Jazeera.

Abu Shaban, who is currently in Qatar, added that the palpable shift in world public opinion away from Israel indicates that justice is within reach despite pressure from the US and Israel.

“The move (by the ICC) to request arrest warrants means there are more people who want to hold Israel accountable for the atrocities it is committing. If these efforts continue, they will eventually lead to something,” she told Al Jazeera.

Furthermore, Abu Shaban said, she deserves justice for her brother and for the suffering that the Israeli occupation and siege of the Gaza Strip has inflicted on so many Palestinians.

“I grew up under intifadas, invasions, (communications) blockades and humiliation at (Israeli-controlled) border crossings,” she said. “I lost someone (in my family) and I lost my life.”

“I have lived under Israeli occupation my entire life.”