The Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) unanimously ruled on Thursday to return to a lower chamber Israel’s challenge against the court’s jurisdiction to try Israeli citizens for war crimes, saying an initial decision on the issue had failed to sufficiently address Jerusalem’s arguments that it is entitled to challenge the court’s jurisdiction.
In a procedural victory for the Jewish state, the ruling by all five judges upheld Jerusalem’s assertion that it had a right to appeal the jurisdiction issue, but did not deal with the substance of the case. The Appeal Chamber’s language was nevertheless critical of the Pre-Trial Chamber’s failure to consider the merits of Israel’s challenge.
The Appeals Chamber said it was not ruling on Israel’s request that arrest warrants issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant issued last year for suspected war crimes in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
be suspended, arguing the issue was not directly connected to the matter of jurisdiction, and saying it was for the Pre-Trial Chamber to determine.
An aide to Netanyahu condemned the decision not to suspend the arrest warrants, saying "Israel expects the [ICC] to cancel the warrants immediately."
And Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations
...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense...
Danny Danon said the decision to revisit the question of jurisdiction "exposes the lack of legitimacy behind the political arrest warrants."
Prof. Yuval Shany of Hebrew University’s Faculty of Law, who filed an amicus brief to the ICC in July last year challenging the court’s jurisdiction, said the Appeal’s Chamber ruling "does not reflect very positively on the Pre-Trial Chamber’s performance."
In May 2024, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over their conduct of the war against Hamas
..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...in Gaza, on charges of crimes against humanity and other war crimes charges.
Specifically, Khan accused the two leaders of "causing extermination," "causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies," and deliberately targeting civilians in a conflict.
Despite challenges filed by Israel and other nations to the prosecutor’s request, including on issues of jurisdiction, the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I rejected those arguments and approved Khan’s request for warrants in November 2024.
Israel filed two appeals to that decision in December.
One appeal dealt with the jurisdiction issue, with Israel arguing that since the terms of the Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Paleostinians explicitly deny any Paleostinian entity legal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals, the Paleostinian Authority never had the right to delegate jurisdiction to the ICC in the first place.
When the ICC announced an investigation into Israel in 2021, Israel raised this issue and the court ruled it would only decide on "further questions of jurisdiction" if and when the prosecutor filed requests for arrest warrants for Israelis.
When ruling on Khan’s request for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the court’s Pre-Trial Chamber I asserted it was too early to consider such arguments.
But the Appeals Chamber ruled on Thursday that the Pre-Trial Chamber had an obligation to consider the jurisdictional challenge by Israel, pointing out that the 2021 ruling had said explicitly that "issues pertaining to the impact of the Oslo Agreements on the Court’s jurisdiction ’may be raised by interested States...’ at a later stage."
The Appeals Chamber added that the lower chamber had therefore "committed an error of law" by failing to sufficiently deal with Israel’s arguments about its right to challenge the court’s jurisdiction.
In its second appeal, Israel contended that Khan should have provided new notification to Israel of his investigation into the allegations regarding the prosecution of the war in Gaza, but instead relied on notification issued in 2021 of an investigation the court had initiated at that time.
Notification is a fundamental principle of the court, whereby the prosecutor must tell the state in question that it is investigating its citizens to allow that country to conduct its own investigation.
In a technical ruling of a three to two majority, the Appeals Chamber ruled that Israel had not had the right to appeal this issue when it did, but may request that the Pre-Trial Chamber grant it permission to appeal, which it has actually done in parallel to the appeal.
A aide close to Netanyahu said in a statement to The Times of Israel following the decision that the Appeals Chamber ruling "highlights the injustice done to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the former defense minister, when the Court issued absurd warrants without having the authority to do so." The source added that "Israel expects the [ICC] to cancel the warrants immediately."
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar wrote in a post on X in that "The [ICC] warrants were issued unlawfully. They are null and void," adding that the ICC "doesn’t have, and never had jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and its former Minister of Defense."
Sa’ar said the Appeals Court "instructed the Court today, to do what it should have done from the start: to make a determination with respect to jurisdiction. On this topic, there is only one correct answer: the Court has no jurisdiction over Israel."
Danon alleged that the ICC "operates as a political tool serving Israel’s enemies," adding, "When international institutions punish democracies and ignore terrorism, they harm not only Israel but the very values on which the free world is built," in a statement from his office.
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