Will the UN Resolution Bring Down a Full International Criminal Court War Crimes Probe On Israel?

"How does the UN Security Council resolution declaring Israel's settlements and buildings in the West Bank and east Jerusalem as illegal impact International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's decision about whether to dive deeper into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?...

The million-dollar question has been whether she would move from a preliminary review to a full criminal investigation.

The concerns were not only potential actual war crimes trials.

They were also about the lasting diplomatic and public relations damage such an investigation would do to Israel. The problems could be both big-picture and specific to Israeli officials who might suddenly be unable to travel to 120 countries who are members of the ICC (including Europe) without risking arrest...

It is clear that UNSC Resolution 2334 was a disaster diplomatically, as well as from a public relations angle, and that Israel is living in a new more hostile world than it was prior to Friday...

After setting the stage, how much did the UNSC resolution move the dial toward a full criminal investigation?

The Jerusalem Post spoke and was in contact with the Foreign Ministry, former IDF international law division head Col. (res.) Pnina-Sharvit Baruch, former IDF international law division head Col. (res.) Liron Libman, former foreign ministry top legal adviser Robbie Sabel, former Hebrew University Law School Dean and Israel Democracy Institute Senior Researcher Yuval Shany and others.

The Foreign Ministry is not giving much at this time, saying it is studying the issue, and might be unlikely to give its opinion even if it had one, lest its opinion damage Israel's tactical options.

Beyond that, there is no consensus with the dust just starting to settle from this diplomatic earthquake. But the overall trend appears to be that the UNSC resolution at most will give Bensouda a political headwind if she was already going to go after the Israeli settlements, but changed very little in a strict legal sense...

More critically, the 2016 resolution comes out in the middle of an ICC examination. If Bensouda wants to point to what the most current trend of thinking is regarding the settlements of international law, the resolution could be a body blow for Israel...

At the end of the day, the question is whether Bensouda will decide to be the first one in history to prosecute people for building houses and laying water pipes, as opposed to being focused on genocide, mass killings and mass rape – which many conceive of as the ICC's true purpose...

Israel lost a significant battle on Friday. But the war over the ICC is still in play."