The former Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, said that the US administration made a mistake when it accepted the International Criminal Court’s accusation against Russian President Vladimir Putin of committing war crimes in Ukraine, and made a mistake again by refusing to bring a similar accusation against Israeli leaders.
He wrote in an article in Foreign Policy magazine that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fears that the International Criminal Court will soon charge him with committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip, which made him appeal to the administration of US President Joe Biden to help him in that.
Press reports indicate that Washington is trying to dissuade the Prosecutor of the International Court, Karim Khan, from bringing charges, but its legal and practical arguments are weak, according to Roth, who currently works as a visiting professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Although Khan did not reveal what he is planning, it is likely that he intends to charge Netanyahu with obstructing the arrival of food and other humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip.
Khan has already warned the Israeli government that this obstruction may prompt action by the International Criminal Court.
Given Israel’s refusal to allow ICC investigators access to Gaza, the obstruction, the consequences of which were to create the conditions for a widely recognized famine, provides, in Roth’s view, greater evidence, among other things, of Israel’s indiscriminate and disproportionate bombing of Palestinian civilians. .
Senior leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) may also face charges of committing “atrocities” in the attack on Israel on October 7, according to the author of the article.
Although Israel spares no effort in denying that it is obstructing the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the former director of Human Rights Watch – the international organization concerned with defending human rights – believes that Netanyahu’s denial of his starvation strategy is unbelievable, given that extensive reports talk about the situation of those responsible. The Israelis create unnecessary obstacles preventing relief supplies from reaching the Palestinian Strip.
A Foreign Policy article described the Netanyahu government’s threat of retaliation against the Palestinian Authority, if the International Criminal Court files charges against Israeli leaders, as foreshadowing the collapse of that authority.
Roth considered this threat to be similar to someone shooting himself; Due to the services the Palestinian Authority provides to Israel by tightening its control over the residents of the West Bank who are suffering under occupation.
The article criticized the US administration’s claim that the International Criminal Court does not have the jurisdiction to try citizens of countries that are not part of it, even if they commit crimes on the territory of a member state.
He said that Washington’s failure to recognize the court contradicts its accusation that the Russian President committed war crimes in Ukraine. These are charges that Biden considered “justified” and were unanimously approved by the US Senate.
Roth concluded in his article that Netanyahu currently represents a major obstacle to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, adding that he adopts extremist positions because he is indebted to the two extremist ministers, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, in the hope of remaining in power and avoiding possible imprisonment on corruption charges in which he was involved before. The outbreak of the current war.