Who Will Enforce International Law, and Who Will Stand in Its Way
By Rima Najjar
If the legal language feels distant, let it be a reminder: distance is part of the design. The systems that govern global justice were built by the West to feel neutral, procedural, above emotion. But neutrality has a cost — and in Palestine, that cost is measured in lives buried beneath rubble, in hospitals without anesthesia, in children denied food because their survival is deemed political.
So, let’s thread through legal frameworks to expose how Israel, backed by the US, manipulate international law to shield power. My essay asks what happens when the world names the perpetrators — and then refuses to act. And it insists that the fight for justice is not just a Palestinian struggle. It is a test of whether humanity still believes in accountability at all.
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A Legal Foundation: The ICC’s Jurisdiction and the Charges
On May 20, 2024, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan announced his intent to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The charges — extermination, starvation as a method of warfare, and the intentional targeting of civilians — are not abstract legalisms. They are tethered to the bodies of over 35,000 Palestinians killed since October 2023, the majority of them women and children, many buried beneath the rubble of homes, hospitals, and UN shelters.
Khan’s application followed months of forensic documentation: satellite imagery of bombed-out neighborhoods, intercepted communications suggesting intent, and thousands of pages of eyewitness testimony and NGO reports. Organizations such as Al-Haq, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the UN Commission of Inquiry submitted evidence detailing Israel’s systematic siege tactics — deliberate obstruction of food, water, and medical aid; the targeting of evacuation corridors; and repeated bombardment of civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.
Legally, Khan’s move is grounded in Article 58 of the Rome Statute, which authorizes the Prosecutor to request arrest warrants from the Pre-Trial Chamber when there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that a person has committed crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction. Israel attempted to challenge the Court’s jurisdiction under Articles 18 and 19, arguing that Palestine is not a sovereign state and thus cannot confer jurisdiction. But the Pre-Trial Chamber unanimously rejected these arguments, reaffirming its 2021 ruling that Palestine, as a State Party to the Rome Statute since 2015, has standing to trigger the Court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed in its territory.
The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were never symbolic — they were structural. They named not just individuals, but the architecture of extermination. And now, that architecture is being excavated further. A new submission to the ICC, filed under Article 15, names 24 Israeli soldiers and commanders — including six from the 401st Armored Brigade — for their role in the execution of Hind Rajab, her family, and the paramedics who tried to reach her. The complaint includes forensic evidence, communications logs, and visual documentation. It does not ask for outrage. It asks for accountability.
The Global Schism: Between Law and Allegiance
The announcement by Khan in 2024 triggered a global reckoning, cleaving the international community along a fault line that separated rhetorical support for international law from the hard calculus of geopolitical allegiance.
Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, welcomed the move as a long-overdue step toward accountability. South Africa, Colombia, and Belgium publicly affirmed their obligation to cooperate with the Court. Algeria, Djibouti, and Egypt hailed the decision as a necessary step toward ending impunity. The African Union issued a statement urging all member states to respect the ICC’s independence and uphold their legal obligations.
But the backlash from Israel’s allies was swift and coordinated. U.S. officials called the move “outrageous,” with Trump’s administration threatening retaliatory sanctions against ICC personnel. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson introduced legislation to criminalize cooperation with the Court. Germany, a State Party to the Rome Statute, expressed “serious concerns” about the Court’s jurisdiction over Israeli nationals. France signaled it would not arrest a sitting Israeli leader. Hungary went further: it invited Netanyahu for an official visit and announced its withdrawal from the Rome Statute altogether.
These reactions were not legal rebuttals — they were political shields. They reflected a geopolitical consensus that prioritizes strategic alliances over the enforcement of international law. The message was unmistakable: the law applies to enemies, not allies.
The Enforcement Dilemma: Legal Authority vs. Political Paralysis
The ICC’s arrest warrants are issued under clear legal authority. But it has no enforcement arm. It relies entirely on member states to execute its warrants, detain suspects, and uphold its rulings. Political paralysis occurs when those states — especially powerful ones — refuse to cooperate, obstruct enforcement, or actively undermine the Court’s legitimacy.
This paralysis materializes in several ways:
- Non-cooperation by member states: Countries like Germany and France may publicly affirm the rule of law but quietly refuse to arrest Israeli officials, citing “national interest” or “diplomatic immunity.”
- Political shielding by allies: The United States, though not a member of the ICC, exerts enormous influence by threatening sanctions, visa bans, and even prosecution of ICC personnel.
- Diplomatic and legal sabotage: Israel and its allies lobby to delegitimize Palestine’s statehood or question the Court’s impartiality, despite the Pre-Trial Chamber’s clear rulings.
- Rhetorical delegitimization: By branding the ICC as “antisemitic” or “politicized,” Israeli officials shift the narrative from legal accountability to ideological warfare.
- Selective enforcement precedent: Arrest warrants for Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir and Russia’s Vladimir Putin went unenforced by states unwilling to challenge power. That precedent now threatens to repeat.
Selective outrage is not new. When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova in March 2023 — just three weeks into the conflict in Ukraine — the charges centered on the alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children. Yet the evidence was thin, the timeline rushed, and the political signaling unmistakable. Ukraine claimed 20,000 children had been “kidnapped,” but could only produce a list of a few hundred — many of whom were later reunited with their families after proper identification.
The ICC acted swiftly, despite the lack of substantiated documentation, and Western powers rallied behind the warrants as a moral imperative. Contrast this with Palestine. Here, the documentation is vast, detailed, and corroborated by decades of human rights reporting. The crimes are not speculative — they are filmed, archived, and lived. And yet, when the ICC dares to name Israeli officials, the same powers that cheered the Putin indictment recoil in outrage. The Court is not praised for its independence — it is branded antisemitic, lawless, destabilizing.
This is not just hypocrisy. It is a structural manipulation of law itself. The ICC is shaped both ways — weaponized when empire demands indictment, and discredited when empire is the accused. Spurious charges are elevated to moral crusades; well-documented atrocities are buried under diplomatic outrage. The result is a legal order that does not protect the vulnerable — it protects power from accountability.
The message is unmistakable: the law applies to enemies, not allies.
And who are those enemies? They are the leaders of states outside the Western alliance system — figures like al-Bashir, Gaddafi, and Putin — whose indictments were hailed as victories for international justice. Their prosecution posed no threat to the geopolitical order.
But when the ICC turns its gaze toward Israel, a close U.S. ally and a linchpin of Western military and intelligence networks, the very legitimacy of the Court is called into question. Legal scrutiny becomes “lawfare.”
Accountability becomes “bias.” The same governments that once championed the ICC’s authority now move to dismantle it.
This is not a failure of law. It is a refusal to act on it. It is the moment when legal clarity meets geopolitical obstruction — and justice is stalled not by lack of evidence, but by lack of will.
IV. The Cost to Palestine: Legal, Material, Symbolic
The consequences for Palestine are profound.
Legally, the ICC’s investigation is one of the few remaining avenues for international accountability. Its arrest warrants signal recognition of Palestinian suffering not as collateral damage, but as the result of deliberate, prosecutable policy.
When powerful states obstruct these warrants, they nullify that recognition. They declare, in effect, that Palestinian lives are beneath the threshold of legal concern.
Materially, obstruction emboldens further violence. Since the ICC announced its intent to issue arrest warrants, Israel has escalated its military campaign in Gaza with devastating precision. In June 2024 alone, Israeli airstrikes killed over 2,300 Palestinians, including more than 80 sheltering in UNRWA-run schools and medical clinics. Entire residential blocks in Rafah and Jabalia were flattened in consecutive strikes, many without prior warning. The targeting of evacuation routes — previously designated “safe corridors” by Israeli authorities — resulted in mass casualties, including families attempting to flee south. These actions directly reflect the charges outlined by the ICC: the use of starvation as a method of warfare, the intentional targeting of civilians, and the systematic destruction of infrastructure essential to survival.
Humanitarian aid convoys have been repeatedly denied entry or bombed en route, despite coordination with international agencies. Gaza’s remaining hospitals operate without electricity, antibiotics, or surgical supplies. Surgeons report performing amputations without anesthesia. The deliberate collapse of medical infrastructure is not incidental — it is strategic. It aligns with the ICC’s evidence of extermination and collective punishment.
The refusal to enforce ICC warrants signals to Israel that it can escalate without consequence. It transforms legal scrutiny into a hollow gesture and converts international silence into complicity. Each act of obstruction becomes a green light for further atrocity.
Symbolically, the delegitimization of the ICC reinforces the erasure of Palestine from the international order. When Netanyahu responded to the ICC’s arrest warrants by calling them “a moral outrage of historic proportions” and “antisemitic,” he did not engage the substance of the charges. He reframed legal scrutiny as racial persecution, collapsing the distinction between critique of state violence and hatred of Jewish identity.
This rhetorical sleight-of-hand was echoed by U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who called the ICC’s actions “lawless” and accused the Court of “targeting Israel simply for defending itself.” German officials expressed “grave concern” over the warrants, while French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly told aides that “France will not be party to the criminalization of Israeli leadership.”
These statements do not refute the evidence — they erase it. They recast Palestinian suffering as a threat to liberal democracy, and international law as a weapon wielded by enemies of the West. Palestine, in this framing, is not a site of mass atrocity but a diplomatic liability. Its claims to justice are treated not as urgent indictments, but as destabilizing provocations.
The effect is silencing. When legal accountability is branded as antisemitism, Palestinian testimony is rendered suspect. When Western allies adopt this framing, they signal that the international order will not protect Palestinians — it will protect itself from them. The ICC’s legitimacy is not just undermined; it is redefined as dangerous when applied to empire.
The Coordinated Pushback: Defending the Court’s Legitimacy
When the ICC dares to name not just ministers but soldiers — when it traces the chain of command down to the trigger-pullers — the backlash intensifies. The naming of six soldiers from Israel’s 401st Armored Brigade is not a provocation. It is a legal act. But in a world where empire is immune and law is conditional, such naming is treated as heresy. The system does not recoil in horror at the crime — it recoils at the audacity of naming it.
In response, a coordinated pushback is emerging — though its effectiveness remains uneven.
In February 2025, nine countries — Belize, Cuba, Namibia, Honduras, Senegal, South Africa, Colombia, Bolivia, and Malaysia — formed the Hague Group, a coalition explicitly designed to defend the ICC and support Palestine’s right to legal redress. Their joint statement affirmed the obligation to end Israel’s occupation and uphold Palestinian self-determination.
More than symbolic, the group pledged to coordinate legal, diplomatic, and economic measures, including restrictions on arms transfers that could violate the Genocide Convention.
South Africa has taken a leading role. It referred Israel to the ICC and filed a genocide case at the International Court of Justice. Its legal team, led by Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, has framed the case not only as a defense of Palestinian rights but as a test of the international system’s credibility.
Civil society is also mobilizing. Palestinian rights groups such as Al–Haq, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, and Al–Mezan have submitted extensive documentation to the ICC — despite facing retaliatory sanctions from the United States, which designated them as “terror-affiliated” in September 2025. Legal scholars in Europe, Latin America, and Japan have issued public statements defending the ICC’s jurisdiction and impartiality.
But the pushback faces structural limits. The Hague Group cannot compel arrests. Civil society cannot override sanctions. Even ICC member states like the UK and Germany hesitate. The result is a fragmented landscape: vocal support from the Global South meets strategic silence — or active obstruction — from the West.
Conclusion: A Fractured International Order
The ICC’s arrest warrants have cracked the façade of impunity. But Israel’s campaign to criminalize the Court threatens to seal that rupture before justice can flow through it.
Israel’s strategy is not merely an assault on Palestinian rights — it is an assault on the very idea that law can protect the vulnerable from power.
To sabotage the ICC is to declare that atrocity will be judged only when politically convenient. It is a betrayal of humanity’s most basic promise: that suffering will not be ignored, and that justice will not be reserved for the powerful.
Israel’s strategy is clear: discredit the institution, delegitimize its findings, and ensure no official ever stands trial. The United States and other allies have joined this effort — not to defend law, but to defend power.
And yet, the pushback is real. The Hague Group, South Africa’s ICJ case, and the mobilization of civil society mark a shift in the global landscape. These actors are not just defending the ICC — they are defending the principle that Palestinian lives are not disposable, that international law must apply even when empire resists.
The effectiveness of this pushback remains uncertain. Arrests have not been made. Western states continue to obstruct. But the narrative is changing. The ICC’s actions have forced the world to name the perpetrators, not just the victims. They have exposed the ideological scaffolding that shields Israeli violence and reframed Palestine not as a crisis, but as a case.
This shift was dramatized in September 2024, when Netanyahu traveled to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly. Social media erupted with speculation and satire about his flight path, after reports emerged that his team had rerouted the journey to avoid airspace over ICC member states. Hashtags like #FlightFromJustice and #ICCDetour trended for days, with users tracking his plane’s trajectory in real time and mocking the irony of a leader who denounces the ICC while maneuvering to evade its reach. TikTok videos stitched together clips of his speech with maps of the rerouted flight, captioned “Impunity has a flight plan.” The spectacle turned legal vulnerability into public theater — and made visible what the warrants had already declared: that even the powerful must now calculate against the law.
If this moment holds, it could mark the beginning of a new legal and moral architecture — one that refuses to subordinate justice to geopolitics.
If it fails, it will confirm what Palestinians have long known: that the international order was not designed to deliver justice, but to protect imperial power. That its architecture — from vetoes to exemptions to selective enforcement — was built to shield the powerful, not to defend the persecuted. And that when Palestinians demand accountability, the system does not bend — it brands them as destabilizers.
The record is being written. The warrants exist. The evidence is public. The alliances are forming. And the question remains:
Who will enforce the law, and who will stand in its way?
*Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher, and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. Visit the author’s blog.
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