ICC decision could lead to arms embargoes on Israel – analysts

Anti-Israel activists told a Dutch court on Friday that the Netherlands was violating international law by selling weapons to Israel. They thus demonstrated the possibility of an arms embargo on Israel due to the decision of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.

If the Hague District Court upholds the activists’ complaint, the Netherlands will be prohibited from sending weapons or weapons components to Israel. The court will rule on December 13. The Netherlands has already halted the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel following a similar case earlier this year.

The complaint highlights analysts’ warnings that Israel could face arms embargoes because of Thursday’s ruling by the ICC, which said there was reason to believe Israel had targeted civilians and used starvation as a weapon of war.

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Quoting legal scholar Eran Shamir-Borer – former member of the Israeli army’s international legal team – the military analyst of Haaretz Amos Harel said the ICC decision could lead to arms embargoes from “Western countries that have so far settled for more lenient measures towards Israel.”

Although the decision concerns Netanyahu and Gallant as individuals rather than Israel as a state, it could still support challenges calling for an arms embargo against Israel, as many states have provisions against the sale of weapons to nations that might use them in ways that violate international humanitarian law.

The Netherlands, which hosts the ICC and is a signatory to its founding charter, the Rome Statute, was one of the European countries to declare that it would be forced to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they set foot there. .

The United States, which is the source of just under 70% of Israel’s arms imports, “categorically” rejected the Court’s decision. Like Israel, the United States is not a member of the ICC; On the eve of the Court’s ruling, the US Senate voted forcefully against a bill calling for an end to the sale of offensive weapons to Israel, although a third of Democratic senators supported the motion.

ICC member Germany has indicated it will respect the court’s rulings, but has not committed to ending its significant arms trade with Israel. Germany is in fact the source of some 30% of Israel’s arms imports, making it Israel’s second largest arms supplier after the United States.

Assaf Uni, Berlin correspondent for the Israeli daily Globescited German media reports that Jerusalem had made a written commitment to Berlin that German weapons would not be used in a manner contrary to international law, which would likely give the German government legal cover in the event of dispute over its arms trade with Israel.

“The ICC will weaken the German government’s case if pro-Palestinian organizations [anti-Israël] are approaching the Court on this matter, as they have done in the past,” Uni wrote, noting that fears of illegal use of German weapons “have now received high-level legal validation.”

Neve Gordon, professor of international law at Queen Mary University of London, was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying that the ICC decision had “put a certain demand on Western countries” regarding “the type of trade agreements that ‘they have with Israel, particularly regarding the arms trade.’

“If Israel’s leaders are accused of crimes against humanity, it means that weapons supplied by Western countries are being used to commit crimes against humanity,” Gordon said.

He told Al Jazeera that most arms deals include a memorandum that sets out the terms of the deal, specifically that they “cannot send weapons to an entity that uses those weapons to commit serious crimes.” violations of international humanitarian law.

“I assume that NGOs in these countries will file petitions in national courts to question the legality of continuing to send weapons to Israel,” Gordon added.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan attending the Outreach/BRICS Plus format session at the BRICS summit, in Kazan, Russia, October 24, 2024. (Maxim Shemetov/Pool Photo via AP)

Even before the ICC ruling, the specter of an arms embargo loomed over Israel, with more than 50 countries – including Russia and China – joining the letter sent by Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, at the United Nations earlier this month to demand that an embargo be decreed against Israel.

This feeling is not the prerogative of Israel’s adversaries either. French President Emmanuel Macron said last month that an arms embargo was the only way to end the war in Gaza. In September, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer halted the delivery of some weapons, fearing they could be used to commit war crimes, but stopped short of calling for a full embargo. Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly also announced in September that she was suspending around 30 arms delivery permits to Israel, declaring that Ottawa did not want “weapons or parts of weapons to be sent in Gaza.”

After the ICC ruling on Thursday, France and Britain indicated they would respect the court’s rulings, while Canada explicitly said it would comply with the arrest warrants. These three countries are signatories to the Rome Statute.

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the ten activist groups calling for an end to arms sales to Israel have drawn attention to the separate legal proceedings against Jerusalem before the UN’s highest court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Magistrates at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as part of South Africa’s appeal over a ceasefire in Gaza, in The Hague, May 24, 2024. (Credit: Nick Gammon/AFP)

The ICJ, seized by South Africa, accuses Israel of “genocide” and, in January, the Court ruled that the Palestinians had plausible reasons to request protection against this crime. Since the ICJ reviews decisions of other courts, the ICC’s decision could cause it to take a position more unfavorable to Israel.

Activist groups said the ICJ opinion confirmed that the Netherlands was obliged to stop selling arms to Israel.

“The government is using my tax money, which I pay, to kill my own family. I lost 18 members of my family,” Ahmed Abofoul, legal adviser to the anti-Israel organization Al-Haq, told a packed courtroom.

“This is the result of decades of government complicity,” he told reporters after the hearing.

The Dutch state has denied violating the UN Genocide Convention – issued after the extermination of 6 million Jews during World War II – which requires signatories to do everything in their power to prevent and punish genocides, and argued that the Court should not play the role of the state in setting foreign policy.

Jerusalem has strongly rejected the accusation of genocide, saying it was engaging in self-defense after some 6,000 Gazans including 3,800 Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel on October 7, 2023. killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, kidnapped 251 hostages of all ages – committing numerous atrocities and perpetrating sexual violence on a large scale.

In response to this pogrom, the deadliest in the country’s history and the worst carried out against Jews since the Holocaust, Israel, which vowed to annihilate Hamas and free the hostages, launched an air operation followed by a ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, which began on October 27, 2023.

More than 44,000 people have died in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health. The figures released by the terrorist group are unverifiable, and they reportedly include its own terrorists, killed in Israel and Gaza, and civilians killed by the hundreds of rockets fired by the terrorist groups that fall inside the Gaza Strip.

Israel says it has killed 18,000 terrorists in combat. The IDF also claims to have killed a thousand terrorists inside the country on October 7.

Israel says it takes “numerous measures” to minimize harm to civilians and emphasizes that the terrorist group systematically violates international law and brutally exploits civilian institutions and the population as human shields for its terrorist activities, fighting from civilian areas, including homes, hospitals, schools and mosques.