In a potential historic comeback, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court on Thursday reversed the November 2024 ruling of the ICC lower court against Israel’s jurisdictional objections to the issuing of arrest warrants for alleged war crimes against Prime MInister Benjamin Netanyahu and then defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The ruling is Israel’s first big win before the ICC since a win it obtained in 2012, and this after a string of losses in 2019, 2021, and November 2024 in which the war crimes proceedings against Israel continued to proceed from initial stages to interim stages, threatening to getting to even later stages, such as indictments.
The decision sends the jurisdictional fight back to the ICC lower court to more fully explore Israel’s jurisdictional objections to the arrest warrants and to the ICC’s intervention into Israel’s conduct of the current war in Gaza more generally.
Until the lower ICC court holds additional hearings on the issue, which could easily take a few months, and maybe even much longer, the whole case against Israel will be frozen.
The arrest warrants themselves against Netanyahu and Gallant technically have not been frozen, but given that the ICC lower court could decide to cancel them after hearing Israel’s full jurisdictional objections, many countries who are members of the ICC may now feel more free to ignore the arrest warrants until a final ruling is reached.
According to the ICC Appeals Court, “Israel’s challenge to the jurisdiction of the Court pursuant to article 19(2) of the Statute should not have been dismissed as premature.
The ICC lower court had said that the arrests could go forward even if there was no final determination on Israel’s jurisdictional objections as these objections could be dealt with at the indictment stage or some other later stage.
In contrast, the ICC Appeals Court said that leaving Israel’s objections to ICC jurisdiction until later was unlawful.
On the merits of the appeal, the Appeals Chamber concluded that the Pre-Trial Chamber committed an error of law by failing to sufficiently address Israel’s argument that it was entitled to make a jurisdictional challenge under article 19(2)(c) of the Statute.
In light of the above, the Appeals Chamber dismissed, as moot, Israel’s request for suspensive effect of two arrest warrants issued after the Impugned Decision and “any other legal acts taken by the Court based thereon”.
In addition, the ICC Appeals Court Chamber, by a majority vote, dismissed Israel’s second grounds for appeal against the ICC lower court, rejecting Israel’s request for an order to the Prosecutor to issue a new notice pursuant to article 18(1) of the Statute.
A majority voted that the appeal was inadmissible
The Appeals Chamber, by 3-2 majority, with Judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza and Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa dissenting, found the appeal to be inadmissible, considering that the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision was not a decision with respect to admissibility pursuant to article 82(1)(a) of the Statute.
The Appeals Chamber deciding on these two appeals is composed of Judge Tomoko Akane, Presiding, Judge Luz del Carmen Ibáñez Carranza, Judge Solomy Balungi Bossa, Judge Gocha Lordkipanidze, and Judge Erdenebalsuren Damdin.
The November 2024 landmark ruling against Israel was viewed by the Jewish state as its most devastating legal loss in history with tremendous diplomatic, public relations, and economic repercussions as well.
However, Israel has been fighting since then to get the ICC lower court decision overturned to make more arguments against ICC jurisdiction.
Some jurisdictional arguments relate to the idea that there is no State of Palestine to give jurisdiction to the ICC as well as the idea that Israel’s own mechanisms for probing alleged war crimes by its soldiers make the ICC’s involvement redundant.
Jesus Christ is King
