Comment by kombine

7 hours ago

Israel committed crimes against humanity in Palestine over which ICC does have jurisdiction. Whether US supports the ICC or not is irrelevant.

5 comments

kombine

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firesteelrain  6 hours ago

I had to dig this up because this was from August. Not sure why it is coming up now.

[1] https://www.state.gov/releases/2025/08/imposing-further-sanc...

I don’t think the ICC was plotting to undermine US or Israel sovereignty. The dispute is about jurisdiction. The ICC has a pretty expansive theory that says it can go after nationals of non-member states if the alleged conduct happened on the territory of a member state. That theory has been around for years and mostly lived in briefs and conferences. What changed in 2025 is that the ICC started acting on it and advancing real cases that implicated non-members. At that point it stopped being academic and started looking like a real-world precedent with consequences for allies and potentially US personnel. That’s the slippery slope. The administration had already tried protests and non-recognition and concluded it was not changing behavior. The August sanctions were framed as a last-resort escalation to draw a hard line against what they saw as ongoing overreach, not as a response to some new hostile intent.

_aavaa_  7 hours ago

Why does it have jurisdiction? Israel has not ratified the Rome Treaty, and have stated they will not do so. Without that the ICC does not have legal jurisdiction over their actions.

  • eschaton  6 hours ago

    Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction.

    • dlubarov  1 hour ago

      Even if we had some legal theory under which ICC could assert universal jurisdiction for certain crimes, the ICC doesn't do so. It has to abide by its own jurisdiction rules, which have no such mechanism.

      The ICC's jurisdictional claim is here is rather based on the idea that PA is the de facto government of Gaza, even though they never controlled it.