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27 May 2024

How an ICC arrest of Netanyahu could play out - Opinion

Dan Perry

The signs are mounting that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is weighing an indictment against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top Israeli officials over Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas in Gaza. This would be an earthquake and could be seen as a case of selective justice that ends up helping the beleaguered prime minister politically.

The ICC, which was established in 2002, is more of a club of about 125 countries that tries to make the rules than a true manifestation of consensual “international law” — and it occupies a rather fuzzy position vis-à-vis non-member states like the United States and Israel.

With a rather modest prosecutor’s budget (about $185 million, of which only about half goes to the prosecutor’s office), it boasts only a handful of convictions, and it has never indicted the leader of a democratic country. It has gone after Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and some other miscreants from dictatorships, like former Libyan leader Moammar Ghadhafi’s son Saif. Netanyahu is already a criminal defendant at home on corruption charges and a tremendously unsympathetic figure to many, but he is not in that despotic league.

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