Is the UNHRC trying to force an arms embargo against Israel?



Should Israel be concerned that the United Nations Human Rights Council has called for its soldiers to stand trial at the International Criminal Court at The Hague?


The United Nation Human Rights Council, of course, doesn’t have the power to disarm Israel or even to enforce an arms boycott against it.

The 47-member council based in Geneva is solely an advisory body. Its overwhelming focus on Israel since its inception in 2006 – seven reports in this month’s 40th session alone – has made anything its says on the Jewish state suspect to charges of bias.

One wonders then if the initial Gaza report by a three-person team of legal experts on potential Israeli war crimes published last week should raise alarm in Israel?

Or should the document, known as the “Report on the Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” be dismissed as one more irrelevant action by an irrelevant body?

The report charges that the IDF may have committed war crimes in Gaza.



The impact of any UNHRC report on potential Israeli war crimes has shifted dramatically, however, because of two significant diplomatic events. In 2012, the United Nations General Assembly upgraded the status of the Palestinian Authority to that of a non-member state, effectively giving it de-facto statehood recognition.


That move allowed the Palestinian Authority in 2015 to sign the Rome Statute, a move that went into effect on April 1.


The PA was then able to ask the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to open an investigation into potential Israeli war crimes, both in Gaza and in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem. But she is only examining information from June 13, 2014, and onward.

This means that any Israeli actions from that date forward can be part of a potential war crimes suit. The report on the 2018 Gaza border protests, when it is fully published, can be part of that potential suit. Similarly, a UNHRC report on the 2014 Gaza war, completed a year later, is already part of the evidence the prosecutor can weigh when making a decision on whether to open a case.

That 2015 UNHRC document, known as the McGowan-Davis report, also found that Israel may have been guilty of war crimes.

Those who think that the idea of companies halting arms sales to Israel out of fear of international criminal action is far-fetched need only look at the decision in January by the global banking house HSBC decision to divest from the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems.

It did so out of concern that Elbit was involved in the production of cluster bombs, even though Elbit has disavowed such activity.

Should the ICC take action against Israel for war crimes, UNHRC activity has already laid the initial framework for the international community to take action against Israel.