Friday, April 24, 2009

an imaginary Arab League scenario

So, despite the Arab League’s thumbing its nose at the ICC’s recent indictment of Sudanese president Omar Al-Bashir, don’t you think they’d take international criminal justice a little more seriously if, indeed, UN investigations into recent “possible” Israeli war crimes in Gaza yielded positive results and the ICC decided to prosecute Israeli officials?

I imagine that most Arab states are siding with al-Bashir on this one because of some combination of the following:
1. Fear that respecting the indictment would open their own regimes to prosecution.
2. Protection of whatever economic interest and political capital siding with Sudan affords them.
3. A general pro-Arab sentiment that is one part desire to stay on good terms with neighbors and one part ethnocentrism/racism.
4. Long-standing resentment towards Western imperialism.

However, they’re generally fierce critics of Israel and I can only imagine that they’d support any international condemnation of the recent atrocities in Gaza. So, if, in our imaginary scenario, the ICC indicted Israeli officials, would the Arab League support the court, in direct contradiction to its response to the al-Bashir indictment? Or would they remain silent for fear of legitimizing the court and its prior- and future- decisions?

This train of thought kinda makes me realize why, if the ICC is concerned with its own power and legitimacy, an Israeli indictment would be a strategic win for international criminal justice, so to speak. It might mean both that the interests of the U.S. did not dominate the court's actions, and that Arab and certain other non-Western states would support the court, too, despite their current skepticism about its "colonial" nature (a critique I'm not sure what to make of yet.)