The chairman of the left-wing Meretz party said on Saturday that while he was tormented by the International Criminal Court’s opening of a war criminal investigation against Israel, “there were grounds for the decision”, which sparked immediate outcry from other lawmakers, mostly on the right. .
“People are telling us, ‘You want Israel to be brought before The Hague.’ “I do not want Israel to be brought before The Hague … But Israel also has a responsibility,” Nitzan Horowitz said in a Channel 13 interview.
‘I say this with great sadness, there were grounds for the decision. I do not want Israel to face these situations … but Israel must ask itself what it needs to do to prevent it, ‘he added, urging the government to cooperate with the Hague International Court of Justice – something he so far not done. .
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Bensouda announced on Wednesday that she will launch an investigation into actions that Israel and the Palestinians have committed in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem since 2014.
Bensouda indicated in 2019 that a criminal investigation would likely focus on the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli settlement policy and the 2018 Great Protest March, a series of violent protests along Gaza’s border with Israel that killed dozens of Palestinians .
Horowitz argued that Israel had brought the decision upon itself by refusing to enter into negotiations with the Palestinians and ‘continue to build in the settlements as if there were no tomorrow’.
Fatou Bensouda, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), briefs the Security Council on the situation in Libya, 8 May 2019 (UN photo / Loey Felip)
The Meretz chairman says that even when he thinks the IDF has acted improperly in Gaza, he said: ‘Even in Operation Protective Edge (the war in 2014) there were things that should not have been done. The civilian population has caused great damage which the court wants to investigate.
“The solution for us is not to say that The Hague is anti-Semitic, but rather to promote the negotiations with the Palestinians that bring about a solution. Then there will be no reason for The Hague, “he added.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud responded to the remarks by saying Horowitz was “abandoning IDF soldiers guarding him and all of us”, adding that the prime minister would fight the “anti-Semitic” decision.
Gideon Sa’ar’s New Hope party calls the remark “miserable” and urges Horowitz to apologize for supporting an anti-Semitic decision. ‘
Yamelet MK Ayelet Shaked said her party would not sit with Meretz in the same coalition, claiming Horowitz justified the ICC’s “political and anti-Semitic activity persecuting IDF soldiers” and called him an “embarrassment to the Knesset”.
Blue-and-white leader Benny Gantz, who spoke to Channel 13, also criticized Horowitz for his “unacceptable” remark.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, a far-right candidate who leads the Otzma Yehudit faction led by the Party of Religious Zionism, said he had urged Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to open an investigation against Horowitz over the suspicion. of ‘betrayal’.
A protester poses with a Palestinian flag outside the International Criminal Court, ICC, during a demonstration in which the court demands to prosecute Israel’s army for war crimes; in The Hague, Netherlands, 29 November 2019. (AP / Peter Dejong)
The International Criminal Court will send a letter to Jerusalem next week setting out the scope of its investigation into war and crimes against Israel and the Palestinians, Channel 13 reported on Friday.
Israel then has 30 days to respond, the report reads, adding that Jerusalem tends to do so after so far largely refusing to cooperate with the Hague International Court of Justice. However, Israel is expected to use its response as an opportunity to reiterate the argument that the ICC has no jurisdiction to hear the case.
The hope in Israel is that the argument over jurisdiction will succeed in delaying the case until the outgoing chief prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensouda, is replaced in June by British lawmaker Karim Khan, who according to Jerusalem could be friendlier or even the investigation can cancel.
A number of officials told Channel 13 that they were concerned that the ICC could start issuing arrest warrants against former IDF officers in the coming months.
As a result, Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz have begun reaching out to peers across Europe to increase support for the case, the Kan public broadcaster reported. Netanyahu and Gantz stressed in these calls that the investigation is biased against Israel, which they say has an independent legal system that can prosecute the alleged crimes.
However, it is unclear to what extent Israel’s argument will remain, especially with regard to settlement policy, as in recent years Israeli courts have been used to regulate settlements and legalize the outposts of feral cats in the West Bank, which most of the international community considered illegal.
Meanwhile, Israel sent warnings to the Palestinian Authority, which submitted the requests to the ICC in 2014 that led to these sins, and told Ramallah that the war crime investigation would make it difficult for Jerusalem to promote confidence-building measures for the Palestinians. . May report Thursday. PA officials responded by saying that just as Israel was engaged in peace talks in the settlements, the Palestinians could continue their contact with Israel as the ICC investigation moves forward.
