After more than 13 months of intense war in Gaza, Israel and Lebanon, international courts today issued arrest warrants for important political figures on both sides. The Prime Minister of , Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant and terrorist group official Mohammed Deif had arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands. The court claims to have “reasonable grounds” to believe that the individuals mentioned have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. On the Israeli side, there are accusations that they were responsible for murders, persecution, inhumane acts and the use of starvation of civilians as a method of war. The charges against the Palestinian terrorist range from murder and kidnapping of civilians, to sexual crimes.
The War, which has spread across multiple countries so far, has left a huge trail of blood across all the nations where it has passed or settled. Whether in the calculations of pro-Israel or pro-Palestine agencies, the death toll is in the tens of thousands and the number of displaced people in the millions. Regardless of the outcome of this conflict, this war is already one of the most traumatic chapters in the country’s troubled recent history. and will leave consequences for future generations. Despite the logistical limitations of broad investigations by impartial international bodies during a period of war, the advent of the internet and the transmission of events in real time give us the certainty that violations occurred on both sides, but their extent still needs to be studied. in a more detailed way.
The Israelis reject the accusations and attribute the court’s decisions to arbitrariness and anti-Semitism, but with the ICC’s definition today, , like Putin, he will have great restrictions on his movement around the planet if he does not want to be arrested. All 122 countries that are signatories to the Rome Statute are obliged to enforce an arrest warrant issued by the ICC if wanted individuals are in their territories. Even though in practice there are no mechanisms that force countries to arrest Netanyahu, and even considering that his main ally, the United States, is not a signatory, the Israeli prime minister will have a much less international life from now on.
Israeli indignation within the dynamics of the war is partly justified if we consider that tyrannical governments in the region, such as that of the ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leadership of the Taliban of Afghanistan, commit, according to numerous agencies linked to human rights, crimes against human rights in their countries and abroad, and do not receive the same judgment and condemnation from international courts and the press. The argument is legitimate, but just like in life, in geopolitics, two wrongs don’t make a right, and Netanyahu, as well as the entire Israeli government, have a lot to answer for for the war strategy adopted in Gaza over the last year.
What we can conclude for now is that from a practical point of view, considering the territorial divisions, war strategies, geopolitical agreements and alliances formed in this world in constant transformation, nothing has been resolved and the path to peace appears to still be distant. At the same time, the multilateral institutions that operate in global governance are going through a deep crisis, since the to the ICC, the world population seems to have lost faith in such bodies, which in turn, believe they have ready solutions for problems that they cannot help solve. While symbolic gestures and decisions are made and endorsed in comfortable rooms in Europe or the United States, Israeli hostages and Palestinian children continue to live in agony inside the Gaza Strip.
