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Does the ICC Prosecutor Have a Case Against Israel's Leaders? Experts Doubt It
(Times of Israel) Jeremy Sharon - Does International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan have a convincing case against the two Israeli leaders he has targeted? Khan said on Monday that Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant would be charged with "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare" as well as "intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population." Roy Schondoff, a former deputy attorney general for international affairs, said that the offense of causing starvation would be hard to prove. Khan would need to prove that the Israeli government was "intentionally starving people in Gaza, notwithstanding all the difficulties caused by Hamas [in distributing aid], and the far from perfect performance of international organizations." "Intentionality" is key here, since the Rome Statute, the ICC's founding document, states that the crime against humanity of "extermination" requires the "intentional infliction" of conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population. "But there is no intention in that regard," said former Canadian justice minister and international law expert Irwin Cotler. "It is clear that there has been no policy of starvation; there is no evidence of that."