The Jan. 16 announcement by Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, did not surprise Israel’s political echelon. Right after the Palestinians signed the Rome Statute on Dec. 31, advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman surmised that the question was not whether the prosecutor would decide on a probe against Israel, but when. Their sharp reactions to the prosecutor’s decision to open a preliminary investigation into the possibility of indicting Israel for war crimes in the Palestinian territories were ready ahead of time in the prime minister’s office and the Foreign Ministry. The opinions provided by the professionals, according to which Israeli civilians and soldiers would be able to roam the world freely without fear of arrest for quite a long time, fell on deaf ears.
Nor were the politicians impressed by the fact that the court has for years been treading water with similar decisions to open investigations in eight countries (Honduras, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Guinea and Nigeria). They did not want to hear that with regard to harming civilians in a military confrontation, Israel is in “good” company, along with the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom, and that Washington and Moscow would apparently do everything possible to derail the investigation.
