I don't like this "but Hamas is worse" rethoric. War crimes are ware crimes, you're not allowed to commit them because the other side is worse than you.

This may be how things played out after the second world war, but it's a horrible standard to live by. If the ICC has any integrity, they won't take "but they started it" as an excuse.

>you're not allowed to commit them because the other side is worse than you.

Aren't you? I thought the Geneva convention and similar treaties all require reciprocity.

Under the Geneva conventions, yes, but the Rome statute only copies select passages of the Geneva convention, and I don't believe the "we can commit war crimes as long as you don't promise not to commit war crimes" is part of what's copied.

The Rome Statute does allow foe the ICC to convict according to the Geneva conventions as well, but the exemptions therein don't necessarily apply.

First of all, "In cases not covered by this Protocol or by other international agreements, civilians and combatants remain under the protection and authority of the principles of international law derived from established custom, from the principles of humanity and from the dictates of public conscience." (Article 1, second paragraph, Additional Protocol I.)

Second, both Israel and Palestine have signed the main conventions. Israel with reservations, and have not signed AP I and II. Palestine have signed all of them, unconditionally.

Since both are signatories, they are both bound by the conventions even if the other party breaks them.

It should also be noted that the geneva conventions have passed into customary international law. They apply even to countries that haven't signed them.

> Aren't you? I thought the Geneva convention and similar treaties all require reciprocity.

No, i don't think so.

To quote the fourth geneva convention (fourth convention is the part related to treatment of civilians):

> Although one of the Powers in conflict may not be a party to the present Convention, the Powers who are parties thereto shall remain bound by it in their mutual relations.

So why did it take them 7 months to issue a warrant? It should have been issued on Oct 8.

The fact that it didn't tell you all you need to know about how legitimate this "court" is.

You're not wrong, but the world is imperfect and they're forced into this weird role of being both a political institution and an "international court" which, as constructs go, doesn't make a lot of sense.

Short of going full "one world government" or the next best thing, "team america world police" you can't really violate state sovereignty even if someone is doing atrocities so instead you need to convince key players or a critical mass that something should be done. If successful, you can then tighten the screws on that person as fast as you can get all the relevant bureaucracies moving.

By combing these warrants into a single press release they've completely lost any legitimacy.

There were no "screws needed" to issue an arrest warrant against Hamas months ago. Yet they didn't.

They should have issued arrest warrants years ago against Hamas for deliberately firing into civilian territory. It's an easy case to make, no one at all claims Hamas didn't do that.

But, nope, they did not issue any warrant.

No, they only issued a warrant against Hamas to pretend like they have some balance in trying to issue a warrant against Netanyahu.

It's no longer Netanyahu on trial, it's actually now ICC that is on trial. If the ICC actually grants the warrant against Netanyahu they have proven themselves to be a bunch of clowns with no legitimacy.

We shall see.

Yeah, again, you're not wrong. While I'd maybe call that position a bit idealistic, it is really weird that they didn't go after various people earlier. That said, they don't have their own carrier strike group so they have to generate international cooperation. The US is already kinda iffy on the ICC's existence because they've called out our war criminals before and, for reasons I don't fully understand, that's a problem. The whole thing is very...contrived I guess?

For the same reason they didn't issue a warrant against the Israel government over the past twenty years: the conflict spiraled out of control months ago.

In 2019, the ICC got involved following the 2014 Gaza war and concluded that war crimes were taking place (on both sides, in different ways), but they concluded that they lacked jurisdiction. Investigations has been ongoing ever since.

Absolutely, most people don't think that far though so they're trying to hedge a bit.

A big complication is that on the one hand you have an identifiable army, on the other hand you have something akin to a militia/guerrilla where combatants and non-combatants are hard to ID often because one person can be both. When you have a resistance it get further muddied because like in WWII France, the resistance was civilians. So you can be a civilian and a combatant.

Things like what Milosevic or what Janjaweed leaders do are identifiable.