Analysis. Nowhere in the world has the legacy left by Donald Trump been praised as much as in Israel. It’s a catchphrase: Mr. Trump is “the best president for Israel” in American history. By formally opening an investigation into alleged crimes since 2014 in the Palestinian territories, Wednesday March 3, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) nevertheless encourages the Jewish state to review this record.
Fatou Bensouda’s decision is a reminder of the law after four years of unbridled unilateralism, encouraged by Washington. Under Mr. Trump’s tenure, the Republican administration worked to normalize Israel’s domination of the territories, for a time urging its ally to annex part of the West Bank altogether.
“In less than a year, we have shifted from a situation of unprecedented American normalization of the colonies and quasi-annexation (…) to the possibility that anyone involved in the settlement enterprise could become the subject of a war crimes investigation ”, analyst Shimrit Meir recently worried. In reality, the two movements are concomitant. While then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo toured the Psagot wine colony with fanfare, Prosecutor Bensouda in The Hague worked on her case.
Since the ICC judges confirmed to the prosecutor her competence to investigate in the territories in February, various Israeli politicians have deplored such a reminder to the past, at the historic moment when the Jewish state normalizes its relations with Arab states. – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. “We were moving beyond the conflict and now we are being brought back to it”, a diplomat said privately, without noting that the Palestinian question was by no means resolved, but simply neglected.
Close to the government, Mme Meir goes so far as to encourage him to provide a political response to the Court’s investigation. It would be a question of clarifying the objectives of Israel: is the possibility of a Palestinian state still part of it? And if not, what does the country want?
International law against God’s will
It is to see far and to presume many of the effects of a legal process which is inherently slow, and politically resistant. Prosecutor Bensouda ends her term in June. She should let her successor, Britain’s Karim Khan, decide her priorities. Mme Bensouda, however, outlined for him three axes: in Gaza, the 2014 war and the repression of the demonstrations of the “return march”, in 2018. But also the colonization in the West Bank, and in particular “The transfer of Israeli civilians”, most sensitive subject for Israel. It is unlikely that Mr. Khan will close these three files.
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