Blogging the ICC Warrants

So anyways, there was some good news in that Labour was thinking about cancelling their challenge to the ICC warrant requests for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant. This was framed as a concession they were making due to the very strong performance of pro-Palestine candidates in the UK general election. They haven't pulled their challenge yet - and now there's word they likely won't.

There's also another view on it. Now - grain of salt, &c - the only place I could find this story in English was on JNS - Sheldon Adelson's pro-Israel news service. IOW - not necessarily trustworthy, but also - an outlet with access to Israeli politicians and large segments of Israel's defenders. Also, it is mostly reporting on Channel 14 reporting (which is in Hebrew) - so their claims would be easy to check. Here's that story.

Some notes:

According to a European source cited by Channel 14, the new Labour government would not pull the challenge, if only because all indications are that the court intends to ignore it, allowing Labour to avoid souring relations with Israel without angering its anti-Israel supporters at home.

How does this make sense? Not pulling the challenge is going to anger anti-Israel people in the UK. That said - it's the Labour party, I totally believe that they totally believe this.  Anyways - it's not so much that the ICC is going to ignore the request - I bet they are delighted for the opportunity to stall some more. The issue is that the ICC has already ruled on the question of jurisdiction. It's been settled - specifically regarding Israel-Palestine. This argument made by the UK has already been defeated.

In either case, Israeli legal officials agree that it’s “highly probable” the ICC will issue arrest warrants in the next two weeks, said Channel 14 reporter Tamir Morag.

Nice.  A timeline. This is longer than it took to issue warrants for Putin, but not ridiculously so. These warrants look like they are being treated fairly. Also too,

On June 25, Netanyahu also said that he expected the ICC would approve its chief prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants, Ynet reported. Netanyahu suggested that the warrants could be issued before his address to the U.S. Congress on July 24.

Well two weeks takes us to after Bibi's visit - so we will get to avoid the indignity of  a wanted war criminal addressing a Joint Session of Congress. But quite possibly only by a very narrow margin of time. The International Rules Based Order everyone!