Comment by kombine
1 month ago
Israel committed crimes against humanity in Palestine over which ICC does have jurisdiction. Whether US supports the ICC or not is irrelevant.
1 month ago
Israel committed crimes against humanity in Palestine over which ICC does have jurisdiction. Whether US supports the ICC or not is irrelevant.
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.
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.
Israelis committed those crimes in Palestine, over which ICC does have jurisdiction.
Crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction.
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.
Palestine has. The actions took place there.
There is no such state as 'Palestine'. The PA is widely recognized and has acceded to the Rome Statute, but it has never held sovereignty in Gaza, making ICC's recognition of 'Palestine'--specifically including not only the West Bank but also Gaza and East Jerusalem--as a State Party under Article 12(2)(a) of the Rome Statute dubious at best.
But really, it's not dubious at all: It's utterly absurd.
ICC claims that since PA claims to represent 'Palestine', and UNGA Resolution 67/19 "Reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967", and that since they consider Gaza "Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" (despite the fact that Gaza has certainly not been occupied by Israel for decades and a completely separate entity exercises sovereignty there), therefore 'Palestine' is a State Party properly represented by the PA and covered by its accession to the Rome Statute, and thus the ICC totally have jurisdiction over Gaza.[0]
Bonkers.
Anyway Israel never acceded to the Rome Statute and the doctrine of state immunity applies. Even if PA were sovereign in Gaza and had properly delegated that sovereignty to the ICC, ICC's claim that Article 12(2)(a) grants them jurisdiction over Israel and Israeli leaders for their actions in Gaza is still a brazen claim to jurisdiction not well supported by customary international law.
[0]: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/itemsDocuments/p...