Talk:International Criminal Court investigation in Palestine

Temporal jurisdiction

The article cites Times of Israel stating that the date is significant because it excludes a Palestinian kidnapping the day before. But it also excludes other things such as the Beitunia killings in May for example. Most newsorgs (AP, NYT) simply report the date as being set to include the Gaza events not set to exclude anything. The Palestinians had to file an additional declaration or the default would have excluded the Gaza events and I have added a scholarly ref for this point.Selfstudier (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Re teenagers:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/04/israel-charges-hussam-qawasmeh-kidnapped-teenagers-murder

"Despite the suspects' close links to Hamas, an unnamed Shin Bet officer quoted in Haaretz appeared to confirm that the agency believed the kidnapping was not directly ordered by the Hamas leadership in Gaza, but was a largely independent operation by a local cell" but let's bomb Gaza anyway?!

https://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/30/world/meast/israel-missing-teenagers/

"The teens -- Eyal Yifrach, 19; Gilad Shaar, 16; and Naftali Frankel, a 16-year-old dual U.S.-Israeli citizen -- disappeared late June 12 or early June 13 from the Jewish settlement of Gush Etzion in the West Bank, the military said." So it could be the 13th?

These refs plus the others I put in the article already suggest that the "one day before" argument and after the fact justification is nothing more than Israeli spin and therefore UNDUE.Selfstudier (talk) 16:51, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Now, unsourced statements are being added to the article eg "Similarly, the ICC would not have jurisdiction to investigate rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel as the impact does not take place in the territories." I would be most interested to see a source for this statement since multiple mainstream sources say otherwise.Selfstudier (talk) 12:03, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

status?

is there any update since april 2021? 102.223.7.9 (talk) 19:02, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

https://www.icc-cpi.int/case-records?f[0]=c_sit_code:1164 shows that victim outreach is continuing. I did see some coverage recently commenting on a perceived slow progress but I forget where. Selfstudier (talk) 22:00, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

I have added some relevant updates now, should clarify the situation partially. Selfstudier (talk) 12:10, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Possible arrest warrants

Please add:

In April 2024, Israeli media reported the ICC is considering issuing war crimes arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top officials. Netanyahu met urgently with Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Justice Minister Yariv Levin, and Foreign Minister Israel Katz to address the issue and to appeal to Western allies to assist.

Cheers, 87.170.194.175 (talk) 20:58, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

That's definitely notable information - thanks. I couldn't find Wikipedia-level info on the reliability of Matzav, so I used the Times of Israel report, which seems to be mainstream Israeli media. The info on whether the ICC is actually considering issue a warrant for Netanyahu is rather at the rumour level in both articles, so I put what seemed to be the more robust factual type claims that Channel 12 (Israel) and The Times of Israel assert more strongly. The claim of a governmental decision to pervert the course of justice is extremely serious; Channel 12 made the claim as its view of the facts, apparently without being worried by the risk of being accused of defamation against the government. A quote seemed safer than linking to the article perverting the course of justice, since the Israeli govt point of view is presumably that as a non-party to the Rome Statute, it doesn't recognise the court, so it has the right to interfere in the legal proceedings; a WP:RS with expert opinion would be needed for an interpretation of what Channel 12 said was the decision made at the meeting. Boud (talk) 22:44, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

In terms of long-term encyclopedic information, a rumour about who might be the subject of an arrest warrant is of minor significance, and is especially sensitive for Wikipedia in the WP:BLP sense, so there's seems little justification for that point, at least on its own. On the other hand, a governmental decision to pervert the course of justice - even if we can currently only describe it conservatively, e.g. using the quote of Channel 12/ToI to make the attribution clear - seems more likely to be long-term notable, even if the attempt to influence the court "from above" is unsuccessful. Boud (talk) 22:57, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, Boud. It's not a "rumour". We have the confirmation. And it was Netanyahu who convened the ministers to that emergency meeting. To discuss the possibility of ICC arrest warrants being issued against himself. He was present.

• Now it reads:
• "On 16 April 2024, three Israeli government ministers held an emergency meeting with governmental legal advisors to discuss the possibility of ICC arrest warrants being issued against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, other senior officials, or officers of the Israeli Defense Forces. According to Channel 12, a decision was taken at the meeting that "Israel would reach out to the court and 'diplomatic figures with influence'" with the aim of blocking the issuing of arrest warrants."

• May I suggest:
• "On 16 April 2024, the Israeli government called an emergency meeting over concerns the ICC could be preparing arrest warrants against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, other senior officials, or officers of the Israeli Defense Forces over breaches of international law in Gaza. Netanyahu, the Foreign Minister Israel Katz, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer reportedly met and according to Channel 12, decided that "Israel would reach out to the court and 'diplomatic figures with influence'" with the aim of blocking the issuing of arrest warrants. Netanyahu raised the matter in his meetings with Britain’s Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron and Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and sought their help." Cheers,--91.54.14.84 (talk) 06:36, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Not done. Atm, this is just speculation, and the article covers it sufficiently for now, pending developments. Selfstudier (talk) 12:17, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

To the IP editor: The ToI says feared ICC warrants for PM ... potential arrest warrants ... prospect ... against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ... Jerusalem received messages indicating that such warrants could be issued. So strictly speaking, it's stronger than a rumour (it's speculation described as such - feared, potential, prospect, could be) in a reliable source, but it's too weak for this article, especially taking into account both WP:BLP and that this is a WP:CTOP.

Regarding the overall length of your proposed text, that seems to me WP:UNDUE. If/when the ICC issues arrest warrants against any Palestinians, Israelis or other nationals in the context of this investigation, those will very likely become extremely notable, especially if it concerns the head of government (formal or de facto) of Israel or of Gaza. Details of which ministers were at the meeting within the context of the overall investigation don't seem so important unless (for example) we have a notable IHL expert who asserts that this is serious in establishing intent to pervert the course of justice and that those particular ministers are legally liable; find a good source and we should consider it. As for mentioning Cameron and Baerbock, ToI only says Netanyahu raised the matter in his meetings this week; it doesn't say that one or the other of the two ministers agreed to pervert the course of justice. Boud (talk) 12:58, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

References

Hospital interview sources don't say nationality of suspects

In this edit I added {{fv}} rather than remove "Israeli" since removing "Israeli" would risk counting as a revert, violating my current WP:1RR limit. I recommend that someone remove the word "Israeli" (or replace it by "Israeli or Palestinian", even though in principle people of other nationalities could be charged, and the sources don't mention nationalities), since the sources don't guess the nationalities of the likely accused, even though they give context that the reader can use to make guesses. Boud (talk) 10:50, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Done. Selfstudier (talk) 16:24, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Split out

I think the ICC investigation, and potential arrest warrants, relating to the Israel-Hamas war should be split out. The reactions relating to that particular investigation is different from the reaction concerning the investigation before 2023. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 15:34, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I just did a redirect of International Criminal Court investigation of the Israel-Hamas war - created today (oldid 1224847809 before my redirect) - to this article. There should be a proper consensus for a split, and to a consensus name, before someone tries a WP:SPLIT. A name that sounds like it is one of the ICC investigations would be misleading. We have no evidence of the ICC opening a "sub-" investigation. Opening any new investigation is generally a multi-year process.

There were already obstacles put in the way of the Palestine investigation since the first preliminary investigation in 2015. We could possibly split off the Reactions section, but I would tend to wait. We don't want to get a list of flags and blabla statements from national leaders around the world, but if people really want a non-flag list, then that would probably better be split off before it distracts too much from the investigation. Boud (talk) 21:13, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

+1. The only reason there is jurisdiction is because of the original investigation. Nor is the current set of warrants necessarily all the warrants that might get applied for. Also agree with splitting out the reactions if that gets out of hand. Selfstudier (talk) 21:37, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

With possible moves to sanction Khan and maybe others involved in the US, there's a fair chance we're going to eventually need a split. But it does seem premature at this time IMO. Nil Einne (talk) 06:33, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Strong support for the split. JDiala (talk) 07:41, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

What name (and scope, implied by the name) do you propose? Reactions to the rumours and then actual arrest warrant requests and possibly later actual arrest warrants of the ICC issued in 2024 during its Palestine investigation would roughly speaking be the most natural split, but the name is obviously too long. If the arrest warrants are confirmed, then Reactions to the ICC Palestine arrest warrants might be a reasonable title, making it clear that the main issue of the arrest warrants, charges, and so on, should stay in the main article, while politicians' blabla and active attempts to sabotage the court proceedings can go in the Reactions article. Personally, I would at least wait to see if the warrants are confirmed (have any previous requests for arrest warrants been refused? my guess is no, but it's not up to Wikipedians to make predictions on this). This case is really a huge step following the precedent of the 1998-2000 indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet, when Thatcher and Bush made a huge effort to prevent a UK-US-supported suspected war criminal, Pinochet, from being tried - and they successfully got him freed and released back to Chile on (dubious) health grounds. But those reactions are just a few paragraphs within the overall article. Boud (talk) 19:56, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Not sure we're there yet, the reactions thus far are not onerous, we can wait, after (if) the warrants are issued, there will a page full of reactions and a need to split. Selfstudier (talk) 21:31, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Reactions to arrest warrant request: pro vs con

Some further copyediting of the 'supports' vs 'opposes' list for the 20 May arrest warrant request is needed, depending on how much detail people are willing to source or how many nuances in govt statements people wish to describe. Obviously, some governments themselves are split, such as the Austrian government (chancellor vs justice minister), and from the Andadolu Agency source alone, the Czech govt (presidency) POV is ambiguous (how can the arrest warrant request be "horrific and absolutely unacceptable" to Czechia but also "full[y] support[ed]" by Czechia? It could be that the crimes for which the five people are suspected are seen as "horrific and absolutely unacceptable", not the arrest warrant request. I left Czechia out of the two lists: I don't see an ambiguous statement justifying extra notability. Apart from on this Wikipedia talk page, its self-contradiction is probably not attracting any attention. Boud (talk) 18:52, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Many governments are split internally on this issue (e.g. between coalition partners). In such cases, it is probably best to describe/highlight the schism, since that is itself notable. TucanHolmes (talk) 15:27, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Ambiguity and WP:AGF

This revert by מתיאל of text by TucanHolmes has the edit description Unattributed opinion by completely unreliable and partisan sources. Israeli threats already mentioned before, unrelated to section. I agree that, as written literally, for someone (such as me, initially) who didn't check the source or the quote, the sentence was a non sequitur (fallacy), and appeared to be unrelated to the section. However, firstly, the opinion was (edit: indirectly) attributed, and Kenneth Roth has a long-term record as a well-known human rights expert leading one of the world's best-known human rights organisations, Human Rights Watch (HRW); particular biases and errors of HRW don't change the fact that Roth is a highly notable human rights expert, whose opinion on this sort of issue is very likely to be notable. Secondly, the source was given, and reading the source was sufficient to show that under WP:AGF, the only problem with the added text was that the initial wording was ambiguous and needed copyediting.

Roth did state and I think the real effect of this investigation is to really undermine the credibility of any self-investigation claim, where this investigation refers to come out of this investigation, The Guardian and +972 investigation in Shaikh's question immediately above, i.e. the journalists' investigation of the Israeli perversion of the course of justice. Confusion arises because there are three different senses of "investigation":

• the journalists' investigation into the Israeli perversion of the course of justice; vs
• the ICC's investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity currently with named Israeli and Palestinian suspects; vs
• a hypothetical Israeli self-investigation of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the same five named Israeli and Palestinian suspects;

and because the new sentence only refers to sentence two of the paragraph, not sentence one. Roth's argument is on-topic for the paragraph: he's arguing that if a state agency spends nine years perverting the course of justice to try to prevent certain legal procedures from taking place, then it's not credible that the same state will carry out those legal procedures itself according to proper legal standards. Boud (talk) 16:29, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the initial wording was ambiguous (should have attributed it right away, or even have quoted verbatim; that was my mistake). I have tried to immediately remedy that by attributing it to Kenneth Roth; however, the current wording is even better, and I believe it meets all relevant criteria. TucanHolmes (talk) 19:29, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

I see that my own description above was partly wrong (I'm now inserting "indirectly") - the initial text asserted the "undermining" in Wikivoice, without attributing it to Roth. It was only indirectly attributed in the sense that someone checking the source would have found that it's Roth's POV; a reader would have assumed that it's the broad consensus. Anyway, it seems that we have convergence. Boud (talk) 17:07, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Infobox typo?

Crimes War crimes: It has a : but nothing after that? 75.142.254.3 (talk) 10:45, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

 Done As I put in the edit description, if you're wondering about the difference between extermination and genocide, see extermination (crime)#Comparison with other international crimes. Boud (talk) 19:15, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Labour Party policy vs UK Government policy

@Boud: Regarding this edit following my edit, the relevant paragraph of the cited source says that the party believes the ICC has jurisdiction. Perhaps we can infer that if the Party believes it then the government believes it too, but the Guardian does not specifically say that representatives of the new government hold that viewpoint. That being said, it's worth keeping in mind that eventually (likely within a few months) the ICC is going to make a decision on whether to issue arrest warrants, and at that time it probably won't seem relevant that the UK objected, and then a newspaper suggested it would drop its objection, but ultimately the UK continued to argue the jurisdictional point. In the long term, it will be the Court's decision on the arrest warrants that this Wikipedia article should focus on, not the position taken by the UK. Mathew5000 (talk) 04:07, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

@Mathew5000: I agree with your last point, that this "dispute" is a minor point and will probably later get compressed into fewer words anyway. All the same, let's see if we can sort it out, and not each give 1-hour speeches like parliamentarians ;). You're correct that Labour officials briefed that the party continued to believe ... in the source. I think it's obvious that in reality, the split/distribution of real decision-making between a political party and the government that typically is composed of members of that party is a matter for political scientists (in the long term) and mainstream media (in the short term) to judge, and probably differs from case to case. On the other hand, the source doesn't literally claim that the party is governing rather than the ministers. How about On 8 July, following the UK general election won by the Labour Party, Labour officials stated that they considered ... ? That way we leave aside whether it's the ministers or the party who are running the government, and the reader will have to live with the Guardian's statement that the sources are "Labour officials" and make whatever inferences s/he wishes from there. The reader unfamiliar with UK politics can reasonably infer that since the Labour party won the election, it has a very close relation to the new government, without needing to know the details. Also, this is shorter. Boud (talk) 23:29, 21 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that wording sounds good to me. Incidentally, the Court's official website has a document [1] showing that the UK's deadline for making its written observations on the jurisdictional issue is 26 July 2024. I expect it will be made public on that date or shortly afterward, what exactly the UK argued to the Pre-Trial Chamber. The Chamber had also ordered that any other requests to file amicus curiae observations must be received by 12 July 2024 [2]. (To be clear, I am not suggesting that these procedural deadlines ought to be mentioned in the article; knowing these deadlines might be helpful, however, to those of us editing the article.) Mathew5000 (talk) 02:28, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

 Done Yes, the procedural deadlines are interesting for us as Wikipedians, but probably not notable in themselves for the article. The big update will be when the Pre-Trial Chamber issues its decision on accepting or rejecting some or all of the arrest warrant requests. Boud (talk) 21:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

UK Dropping objections to the ICC Arrest Warrant

The section on arrest warrant applications needs to be updated, as news sources (e.g. https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-uk-to-drop-opposition-to-icc-arrest-warrants-against-gallant-netanyahu/ and https://www.theguardian.com/law/article/2024/jul/08/labour-expected-to-drop-challenge-to-icc-over-netanyahu-arrest-warrant) have reported the UK appears to be dropping the objections levied by the previous administration, despite the previous reporting of Maariv. WhyAreWeHereAnyway (talk) 00:04, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

So far the news reported that it was being dropped, then not being dropped and then being dropped again, I think it is best to wait a few days until the court deadline has passed and then we will actually know without having to rely on briefings from this or that official. Selfstudier (talk) 09:39, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

Having said that, the confirmation from Downing Street just came out so I added the ref for it. Selfstudier (talk) 12:02, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

TODO: red-linked ICC judge

Of the three ICC judges in Pre-Trial Chamber I for this case, Iulia Motoc and Reine Alapini-Gansou are blue-linked, but Nicolas Guillou (Q125985448) is currently red-linked (not even an fr.Wikipedia link yet). His pre-ICC and ICC notability should be easy to establish especially with a few more good sources (he is unlikely to be Nicolas Guillou (film director), unless he is a "Renaissance man" who is both a war crimes prosecutor and a film director). Boud (talk) 20:33, 27 July 2024 (UTC)