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Jumbo Shrimp, Dry Rain, Government Organization, Un-politicized International Law

Europe has jumped on board in claiming that the ICJ has no jurisdiction to rule on the legality of the Security Fence. The article doesn't describe the substance of the claim, but I assume that it's the same as Israel's and the US's - that the ICJ's charter probably only gives it jurisdiction in cases where both parties have agreed to be bound by the judgment.
This entire debacle is dramatic evidence of what pro-Israel opponents of the internationalization of law have been insisting for a long time - it is absurd to make elaborate procedures and to work out careful protections in crafting legal guidelines when the overwhelming majority of the world does not actually believe in the Rule of Law. Does anyone think that when the unaligned nations and the Arab block voted to send this thing to the ICJ, they were thinking about legal minutia? Of course they weren't - they were thinking the same thing as they were in Durban - here's another chance to stick it to the Jews.
People would do well to bear this in mind when pushing Israel to accept the ICC (President Clinton, Prime Minister Barak, you should have known better). Unfortunately, I expect that if this case gets thrown out by the ICJ, people are going to use it as proof that international law and its built-in legal protections work, and that Israel should therefore join the ICC. This advocacy neglects a couple of things:
  • Israel's main line of defense in this case, and the one that, should Israel be successful, will be the one that succeeded, is that it never submitted to the Court's jurisdiction on this matter. Were Israel to sign the ICC, it would not have the luxury of this defense for any matter.
  • Even in the impossible-to-be-certain-of case that Israel would never lose an ICC case, it would still have to spend diplomatic and monetary capital every time another frivolous case was brought before the Court. This scenario has been played out before - Sharon in Belgium, the Fence at the ICJ, etc. In fact, Belgium is a dramatic example for why the "filter" argument in regards to the ICC is bunk - even if a case never gets to the Court, Israel has to spend resources in the filter stage arguing that it shouldn't get to the Court. That's when it's not spending resources arguing that the filter itself shouldn't be changed.
  • This is a form of moving the goalposts - it presents another institution that Israel has to be accountable to, another body that gets to dictate the criteria by which Israel has to live. Israel gets nothing positive from submitting to its jurisdiction, only the potential for formally becoming an international pariah.
    Anyway, these issues aside, here's the latest from our how - do - they - say - it - with - a - straight - face department:

    the Palestinian Authority... accused Israel of trying to politicise the case.
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