Hamas: ICC will lose its raison d'etre by forsaking Gaza

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Al Mayadeen
25 Dec 2023 22:30

The Palestinian resistance said that the ICC's recurrent dereliction of duties raises questions about their advertised purpose of protecting Humanity from mass atrocity crimes.

An exterior view of the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 (AP)

Hamas called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to overcome political pressures and assume its responsibility and obligations after 80 days of the Israeli occupation's continued aggression against Gaza.

Hamas urged the ICC to meet its raison d'etre obligation by holding Zionist war criminals accountable and preventing them from escaping punishment.

The Palestinian resistance said that the ICC's recurrent dereliction of duties raises questions about their advertised purpose of protecting Humanity from mass atrocity crimes.

ICC legal preconditions and procedure

The ICC mandate is directed at investigating atrocious crimes that hold special significance in the international community (i.e. mass atrocities such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes of aggression) as per Article 5 of the Rome Statute.

However, as a precondition, Article 12 of the Rome Statute highlights that the individual who allegedly committed the mass atrocity crime must either be a national of a state party to the Rome Statute or must have committed the alleged crime on the territory of a state who is party to the Rome Statute.

"Israel" is conveniently not party to the Rome Statute and not even a signatory. The Occupation had refrained from signing the statute over concerns of prosecutions for illegal settlements.

However, Palestine, on the territory of which mass atrocity crimes are being appallingly executed on a daily basis, is party to the Rome Statute and has been so since 2015.

Earlier this year an arrest warrant for the Russian president was issued by the ICC under the pretext of transferring Ukrainian children from battle zones to the Russian mainland.

The ICC pre-trial chamber had launched an investigation into the matter even though neither Russia nor Ukraine is a party to the Rome Statute and even though the alleged crime that was framed as "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" was a very ambiguous accusation and that arguably didn't constitute a crime in the first place, an arrest warrant was issued against President Putin.

In Gaza, however, where the conditions are appallingly more befitting of the ICC's mandate, we see that the ICC's pre-trial chamber has shied away from going after Israeli leaders under Western political pressure.

According to recent estimates, the Israeli Occupation Forces have killed more than 8,500 children in Gaza since October.