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The Unsettling ICC Gambit

(Jerusalem Post) Melanie Phillips - It is intolerable that the ICC has first of all accepted that "Palestine" is a state, and second that it may put Israelis in the dock while they are the victims of true war criminals, the Palestinians. Whether the ICC will actually proceed with a prosecution, however, remains very much to be seen. The Palestinians think that, since the world is on their side, the ICC will be too. This, though, is far from clear, particularly since the ICC knows if it doesn't display judicial integrity it is finished. Originally, Israel strongly supported the formation of such a court to end the injustice of impunity for war crimes or crimes against humanity. But it pulled out after a group of Arab states inserted a provision in the ICC's governing Rome Statute specifically to target Israeli settlements. It's the settlements, rather than nonexistent Israeli war crimes in Gaza, which the Palestinians are thought to want to place in the ICC's sights. They know that the West endorses the view that Israel's settlements are illegal. But this widely held view is simply wrong. As international lawyers and eminent jurists and scholars such as Eugene Rostow, Howard Grief, Eugene Kontorovich, Alan Baker and others have attested, the only fair and logical interpretation of the relevant treaties and statutes is that the settlements are legal several times over. Israel is entitled to retain territory seized in a war of self-defense while the people there remain belligerent. The claim that the settlements are illegal under the Geneva Convention is based on a clear misreading of its prohibition of population transfer; the Israelis living in the West Bank freely chose to migrate there. These territories were never "Palestinian" lands, because such a collective entity never existed - until it was invented purely to destroy the Jewish people's legitimate claim. The writer is a columnist for The Times (UK).
2015-01-23 00:00:00
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