The threat of prosecution by international bodies, prominent among them the ICC, has long been an argument against any action taken to curtail the Israeli judiciary’s power, this argument once again being amplified surrounding the recent judicial reform proposal.
Advocate Avraham Russell Shalev and Professor Eugene Kontorovich from Kohelet’s international law department take a deep dive into this claim, demonstrating how the ICC argument firstly undermines Israel’s principled objections to the tribunal’s jurisdiction, and legitimizes ICC interference against Israel, regardless of whether any judicial reform is implemented, undermining years of diplomacy that portrayed the Court as illegitimate. Secondly, the small, highly modified components being discussed in the current proposal would not affect the prosecution of international war crimes. While enacting the government’s proposed reforms would not affect the prosecution of war crimes, the opponents of the reforms invoking the specter of the ICC to buttress their case and alarm military soldiers may instead have created a self-fulfilling prophecy by increasing the likelihood of ICC prosecution of Israeli soldiers.
See the full paper:
