Israeli Military Law Expert: 'ICC May Not Be Equipped to Rule on War Crimes'

"With a recent B'Tselem report declaring that the IDF legal division is whitewashing its soldiers' war crimes, and with the International Criminal Court Prosecutor's Office likely due to visit Israel soon, former IDF International Law Division Commander Col. (res.) Pnina Sharvit-Baruch has expressed deep concerns about the ICC...

ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has been preliminarily examining alleged 2014 Gaza war crimes by Israel and the Palestinians since January 2015, but has not decided yet whether to order a full criminal investigation.

Regarding Bensouda, Sharvit- Baruch told The Jerusalem Post in a rare and extended interview, 'I am very concerned. You would expect...the ICC, which deals mainly with war crimes and crimes against humanity, to have expertise in international humanitarian law, but also to include people who have an understanding from a practical point of view – [military law] practitioners.

'If they do not have that – and I don't think they have any, or they are very marginal – it is very worrying. It is like having someone decide medical negligence without any understanding [of operating] as a doctor,' she added...

Part of the dilemma for Bensouda, Sharvit-Baruch explained, is how different the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is from the Africa-style genocides which the ICC usually handles.

Describing the dilemma, she stated: 'Until now, most of the war crimes dealt with by the ICC were: someone comes into a village and kills all the men and rapes all the women – there is no question about the legality of an operation.

'But in a more nuanced operation, where the question is what is more proportionate – I think a decision [on complex issues of proportionality], if they decide it is a war crime, would be devastating for their professional prestige,' she said..."