In thirty years of political career, Benjamin Netanyahu has become accustomed to legal proceedings, he who remains prosecuted in three corruption cases in Israel. But the slap inflicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) this Monday, May 20, promises to be unprecedented: Attorney General Karim Khan is calling for an arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity possibly committed during of the war in the Gaza Strip. If this mandate were to succeed, the Israeli Prime Minister would join the sinister gang of Vladimir Putin and the former Sudanese dictator Omar El-Bashir.
Until the end, Netanyahu did everything to prevent Karim Khan from announcing this request. While neither Israel nor the United States are members of the ICC, the Israeli and American administrations have increased pressure to delay this decision, under the pretext that it would jeopardize a possible truce agreement with Hamas. But the damage was already there, after seven months of war in Gaza and more than 34,000 Palestinian deaths: Netanyahu, in the company of several senior leaders of the Jewish state and the leader of Hamas Yahya Sinwarfinds himself in the dock, implicated in the bombing of civilians and suspected of having implemented a deliberate starvation strategy.
The judges of the International Criminal Court will now determine whether the conditions are met to issue these arrest warrants requested by the Attorney General. Such a decision against “Bibi” would have nothing symbolic: it would force the 124 member countries of the ICC to arrest the Israeli Prime Minister if he visits their territory. So no more diplomatic trips to Paris or London. This would be a first in history for an Israeli leader and a massive setback for Netanyahu, who in each electoral campaign highlights his proximity to the greats of this world.
An unpopular Prime Minister, but legitimately elected
But the accusations of the ICC Prosecutor General go well beyond the person of the Prime Minister. The entire Jewish state finds itself attacked by this procedure. Unlike the Russian case, in which Putin is being prosecuted individually for his war of aggression against Ukraine and more specifically for the deportation of Ukrainian children, Israel remains a democracy, even if imperfect, with a set of institutions and political figures capable of making decisions in the conduct of the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu and his far-right allies came to power legally after the November 2022 elections and a subtle game of political alliance. “For years, the trajectory of Israeli policy has remained constant on the Palestinian question, recalls Hugh Lovatt, Middle East specialist at the European Council on Foreign Relations. No Israeli Jewish party really supports a two-state solution and even the centrists claim to maintain control over the Jordan Valley and promise never to divide Jerusalem. This political alignment reflects profound changes in perception on the Israeli side, which were pushed by Netanyahu but are not limited to him.
If the Prime Minister has reached record levels of unpopularity since October 7 and still has to face huge demonstrations every Saturday in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, few Israelis question the war being waged in the Gaza Strip. “The demonstrators are marching against Netanyahu as a person, but not against the policies he is implementing nor against the ideas he represents,” underlines Mairav Zonszein, Israel specialist at the International Crisis Group. Netanyahu is far away to have exclusivity on the wrongs of Israeli policy.” In a Peace Index survey published in January, 88% of Israeli Jews believed that the number of Palestinian victims was justified. On their television channels, Israelis rarely see the suffering of Gazans, when videos of civilians taken hostage by Hamas play on repeat.
Since October 7, a feeling of revenge has gradually consumed a large part of Israeli society. At the end of November in Jerusalem, we met Gug Metzger, whose two parents were being held hostage by Hamas. This forty-year-old had just set up camp in front of Netanyahu’s office to demand his departure and spoke in a calm voice, without anger, about being “Israeli, Arab, left-wing, pacifist”. In short, the antithesis of the power in place. Before adding: “But in my opinion, for every Israeli killed on October 7, ten Palestinians must die. That’s the minimum.” Since then, his mother, who arrived from Yemen more than fifty years ago, has been released by the terrorist organization, but he has had no news of his 80-year-old father…
While the Israeli army prepares for what it describes as its final battle, in Rafah, the last bastion of Hamas where more than 1.5 million Palestinian civilians are refugees, the Jewish state is losing a huge battle . That of world opinion.
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