Dennis Ross: ICC indictments will likely lead Israelis to continue Gaza war
Washington's former Mideast negotiator told DW he fears possible ICC arrest warrants seem to many Israelis as "creating moral equivalency" between Israeli officials and the Hamas leaders who ordered the October 7 attack.
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00:00 The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court has said he's seeking arrest warrants for Israeli leaders,
00:06 including Prime Minister Netanyahu, for their conduct of the war in Gaza.
00:10 Israeli politicians across the spectrum have condemned the move. The prosecutor has also applied for warrants for key leaders of Hamas,
00:18 widely designated a terrorist organization.
00:21 My guest this week from Tel Aviv is Dennis Ross, former special assistant to President Barack Obama,
00:28 and for more than 12 years a key player in shaping US policy in the Middle East.
00:33 He's not optimistic about what he sees now.
00:36 I can tell you this is worse between Israelis and Palestinians than at any point on which I worked on this issue,
00:43 including during the second intifada. The ICC's announcement comes at a time when Israel's human rights record is under minute scrutiny,
00:50 with investigations by major media outlets into violence by Jewish settlers.
00:56 Can a Palestinian state ever emerge from so much conflict and hatred?
01:02 Dennis Ross, welcome to Conflict Zone.
01:07 Good to be with you. Let's start with the announcement from the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court.
01:13 Arrest warrants have never been sought before for Israeli leaders, and there's a storm of protest,
01:19 not only from those named, but from across all political factions in Israel.
01:25 What effect do you think that this will have on Israel's conduct of the war if the warrants are approved by pre-trial judges?
01:34 I don't think it'll have a positive effect. I think it creates in the minds of most Israelis across the political spectrum
01:42 that a moral equivalence is being established between
01:46 those who came in with the express purpose of deliberately
01:51 killing innocents,
01:54 kidnapping people as young as nine months old,
01:57 raping,
01:59 just engaging in unspeakable violence, brutality,
02:03 and in a very deliberate, determined way.
02:08 And you're creating, in a sense, you're saying you're treating them the same as you're effectively treating
02:15 leaders of a stage who are responding to this kind of assault.
02:19 There certainly are issues that I think the
02:24 prosecution is raising
02:26 about the way the Israelis have conducted the war, but most Israelis will see this
02:31 as creating a moral equivalence where there is not.
02:36 In the absence of that, I think, in terms of most Israelis, will be
02:41 that they need to prosecute the war and
02:45 try to ensure that they've defeated Hamas in a way, because in a sense, they're going to fear that,
02:51 under no circumstances will they ever be seen as being justified in terms of defending themselves against these kinds of attacks.
02:58 Whether that's a correct perception should exist or not, that is a perception I'm afraid will exist here.
03:06 To be fair to the prosecutor, he didn't suggest there was any moral equivalence. On the contrary,
03:12 the way that it's being explained by him and by his officials is that if evidence is brought to him,
03:20 if amniphasia evidence is brought to him of crimes committed on both sides of a conflict,
03:26 he has a duty to act and to pursue that evidence.
03:29 And this is one way in which he's doing it by seeking arrest warrants for those who have been named.
03:35 What other choice did he actually have?
03:37 Well, I think there is an interesting question here in terms of timing, because there was an expectation
03:42 he was going to visit Israel and have discussions prior to coming out with this, and obviously he did not do that.
03:49 It does strike me that it might have been, again, just from a practical, pragmatic standpoint,
03:55 it might have made more sense to be here in advance before he issued rules,
04:03 but obviously he chose not to do that.
04:05 There's the panel he has, as I have to say, is a serious panel. I think the problem, however, that I'm suggesting is
04:13 by not having come here before
04:17 releasing this, I think it contributed to the kind of very broad reaction.
04:24 You have people who are extremely critical of Prime Minister Netanyahu, who are also quite critical of this.
04:32 So a little bit more could have been done to set the stage, I suspect. But we are where we are.
04:37 If these very serious charges are not to be tested by the ICC, where else would they be heard?
04:46 Again, it's not clear, but I think there's a larger issue here that ought to be kept in mind.
04:52 And that is, when you fight an enemy that deliberately uses its civilian population,
05:02 not just as a shield, but really as a hostage, you're put in a position where what are the choices you have?
05:08 Not to go after them, given what is going to be the civilian consequence.
05:13 And therefore face this again, or go after them.
05:17 And unfortunately, there is going to be a civilian consequence. Now, I will grant,
05:22 one of the things that the Israelis should have done, I've made an argument for this from the very beginning of the war,
05:28 they should have been much more forthcoming with humanitarian assistance.
05:32 They should have gone out of their way to demonstrate this was an effort to,
05:38 an imperative to defeat Hamas and not to punish the Palestinians who live in Gaza.
05:44 And Israel did not act in that way. And it made it easier for those to portray what they're doing
05:51 in a way that is outside of what, outside the bounds of acceptability.
05:56 But again, the reality is Israel was faced with a very cruel dilemma.
06:01 You have an enemy that cares not one whit for the well-being of its own public,
06:06 is quite ready to expose them, doesn't mind that Israel killed a lot of Palestinians,
06:11 in fact, seems to relish that prospect.
06:14 But this is what you seem to be outlining is that this is a watershed moment
06:19 for international justice, isn't it?
06:22 I really do think there's a question here about how we may have to redefine
06:28 international humanitarian law. I mean, on the one hand,
06:32 you still have an obligation to try to minimize the casualties to civilians, noncombatants.
06:39 That's an obligation that shouldn't change. But how the tactics you can use,
06:45 how you go about doing that, how do you create a clear distinction
06:51 between those who are using human shields as a deliberate tackle
06:55 and those who have to contend with that?
06:58 I do think this is an issue that we're long overdue trying to come to grips
07:03 with how we can better define international humanitarian law,
07:08 given these kinds of non-state actors and given the tactics that they employ.
07:12 Whatever system that you want to work towards or you think that the international
07:18 community should work towards to provide some kind of justice in situations like this,
07:25 we're not going to be able to live in a world where accountability is reserved
07:29 for enemies, not friends. Isn't that the question that Gaza is forcing everyone
07:34 to consider in its essence?
07:35 Well, I think it is, at least in part, but I don't think it's coming to grips
07:40 with the question I've been posing, which is what is a legitimate strategy
07:45 for trying to root out an enemy, a non-state actor, as it seems?
07:52 If you're going to have to have international humanitarian law,
07:56 it can't simply be one which says, okay, you're entitled to strike back,
08:00 but you have to minimize civilian casualties.
08:03 What if it turns out that the choices for minimizing civilian casualties
08:07 is quite limited? I mean, there is something else that could have been done.
08:11 Something else that could have been done is, in a situation like this,
08:16 maybe international humanitarian law should say there needs to be a period
08:21 and there need to be areas where people can be evacuated so they're not as shields.
08:28 I mean, what separates, for example, how the United States approached Fallujah
08:33 is that the people who lived in Fallujah were actually allowed to leave.
08:38 In Iraq. In Iraq.
08:40 In Iraq, yes. They were allowed to leave. They could leave the city.
08:44 The problem here in Gaza, because it's so small, they're not allowed to leave.
08:49 What one finds in every war zone is that people leave.
08:54 Look at Syria. About 5.5 million people left Syria.
09:00 It wasn't a simple thing to do, but 5.5 million people left Syria.
09:04 In Gaza, the people are not allowed to leave.
09:07 So I think one of the challenges for international humanitarian law
09:12 is to be able to come up with, if you're trying to protect the well-being of civilians,
09:17 which is a--it's not just a moral imperative. Of course it's a moral imperative.
09:23 It should be a political imperative as well.
09:26 But then one of the things you have to come up with is strategies for evacuation
09:30 that the international community can facilitate as a way of ensuring that if a war is being fought
09:37 against those who are using human shields, at least the international community is doing everything it can,
09:42 not just in terms of providing humanitarian assistance,
09:45 but in terms of getting them out of harm's way.
09:48 It hasn't been helped, the situation has it, by the fact that some of the reporting
09:54 about Israel's behavior by the administration in the States has been contradictory.
10:00 On May the 10th, the State Department wrote to Congress with its most detailed assessment
10:05 of Israel's conduct, and it concluded that Israel had most likely violated international standards
10:11 in failing to protect civilians in Gaza, but saying at the same time it had not found
10:16 specific instances that would justify cutting military aid.
10:21 The department was immediately accused of a fudge. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen
10:25 told reporters, "If this conduct complies with international standards, then God help us all."
10:31 He has a point, doesn't he?
10:34 Well, he does, but I guess I keep coming back to the issue of international standards.
10:39 International standards have not adjusted to a reality where you have an enemy that uses human shields.
10:45 So we end up judging the actor who has been attacked as they then try to root out
10:52 those who are using human shields.
10:54 But how do you explain the apparent contradictions in the State Department report?
10:58 On the one hand, it concludes that both action and inaction by Israel had slowed the flow
11:04 of aid into Gaza, but on the other, it says we don't currently assess the Israeli government
11:09 is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S.
11:14 humanitarian assistance into the area. In other words, slowing the aid flow is not restricting it.
11:19 Of course it is.
11:21 Look, I think what you have is you have really I think you're raising two different kinds of issues.
11:27 One issue has to do with the use of weapons. That's what you were first raising.
11:31 Now the second thing you're raising is the issue of the permission of humanitarian assistance
11:36 to go in, in the quantities that it should have been permitted.
11:39 On the former, I think what the State Department was finding was that they were looking at the totality
11:45 of the people, the numbers of people killed, and said almost by definition we draw a conclusion
11:52 that this must have been done, force must have been done in a way inconsistent
11:57 with international humanitarian law.
11:59 On the other hand, we don't have specific instances of what that was done.
12:03 I can understand that duality.
12:06 The other issue you're raising about the permission, the provision of international,
12:13 of humanitarian assistance, I share that view.
12:17 The fact that it is not popular here with the Israeli body politic,
12:21 who have suffered greatly from October 7th, and who every day see what Hamas is doing
12:27 by holding hostages, increasing numbers of them no longer being alive,
12:33 and there the body politic here is not feeling very sympathetic to the Gazan population,
12:40 who they see somehow being in league with Hamas.
12:43 My own view is the Gazan population is the victim of Hamas, not in league with Hamas,
12:50 and Israel's approach to the war needed to separate Hamas from the population of Gaza.
12:57 Let's talk, if we may, about the state of U.S.-Israel relations.
13:01 Are they now as bad as you've known it during the course of your career?
13:07 I think we're certainly at a low point, but I wonder how much it's U.S.-Israel
13:15 and it's just the leadership.
13:17 I do think that there is enormous frustration with Prime Minister Netanyahu.
13:22 I don't think that extends necessarily to all Israelis and not necessarily even to everyone
13:28 in the current government, but I do think there is growing frustration with him.
13:34 President Biden has always had a good relationship with him.
13:38 I think it's become very frustrated for a variety of reasons.
13:42 One is on a number of occasions, Prime Minister Netanyahu has made promises to him
13:46 and not fulfilled those promises.
13:48 And I think that has contributed greatly to the frustration that he feels.
13:53 You know, do I think this is something that can be overcome, at least between the U.S. and Israel?
13:58 Yes, because I don't see this necessarily as extending to the two countries.
14:04 Right now, I think there's a problem between the two leaderships.
14:07 We'll have to see how that plays out.
14:09 On the limiting of weapons supplies to Israel, you called it a mistake,
14:15 what the administration had done, saying it took all the pressure off the Hamas leader,
14:19 Yasser Sinwa, and pressure on him was the key to a hostage deal.
14:23 But President Biden is someone who's all but accused Israelis of war crimes
14:29 by saying they've been bombing indiscriminately.
14:31 If he goes on giving them those same American bombs to continue that indiscriminate bombing,
14:38 it makes him look weak, doesn't it? And complicit.
14:44 Well, I think, you know, you can I think you can kind of present this however you choose to present it.
14:51 The fact is, I think he's trying to strike a balance.
14:54 He wants an outcome where Hamas, who not only committed terrible atrocities on October 7th,
15:01 but continues to do it with the way it brutalizes the hostages that it holds.
15:06 There's almost seems to be kind of international indifference to what Hamas is doing to the hostages.
15:12 Obviously, there's not that indifference here in Israel where for all the families,
15:16 their life was frozen on October 7th. In the case of President Biden,
15:21 he wants to be sure the outcome is an outcome where Hamas is no longer in control of Gaza,
15:27 where Gaza can no longer be a platform for attacks against Israel.
15:31 And he's trying to strike a balance between how do you achieve that objective and at the same time,
15:38 conduct the war in a way that tries to minimize the level of damage and destruction done to the Palestinians who live in Gaza.
15:48 It's a very hard, very hard balance to strike.
15:51 One can one can try to be pure in one direction or the other,
15:55 but then you're not going to achieve what is the most important objective.
15:59 I don't think the it's very important to find a way to end this war.
16:03 But this war also needs to end in a way where Hamas is not in a position where it has any possibility of recouping.
16:10 Another reason, surely, for withholding weapons is to Israel is that American taxpayers are funding an Israeli offensive that the majority of them now appear to be against.
16:20 Some of the latest polls show 55 percent of Americans against 36 percent who support Israel's conduct of the war.
16:29 Don't you think that the prospect is pretty worrying for the Biden administration six months away from a presidential election?
16:35 Is that one of their calculations? I'm sure all things being equal.
16:41 You're the president of the United States. You're in an election year.
16:44 This is an issue that almost by definition is not helpful.
16:50 So you would undoubtedly like to see this over as soon as possible.
16:56 And while and yet at the same time, while the president wants to see this over as soon as possible,
17:01 he doesn't want an outcome where somehow Hamas is able to recoup and reestablish itself.
17:06 If it is, this is not the last time we'll see this.
17:09 Hamas has shown not the slightest bit of interest in developing Gaza, not the slightest bit of interest in providing wealth for the well-being of its own public.
17:20 It built 400 miles of tunnels underground. All the materials it did and used in building those tunnels,
17:28 all the materials it used in building a military industrial base underground,
17:33 all that could have been used on the surface to advance Gaza and the well-being of the people there.
17:40 It did none of that. And if it had a chance, it would do this all over again.
17:45 So you understand, of course, the president wants this over.
17:48 It would be much better for the president, especially in an election year, if this was no longer an issue.
17:54 But he doesn't want it over in a way where Hamas can do this again or it can reconstitute itself and subject everybody,
18:00 Palestinians and Israelis alike, to another round like this.
18:05 This is also a time when Israel's human rights record has been under some of the most intense scrutiny,
18:12 not least because of multiple cases of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank.
18:19 How concerned are you, again, that despite repeated international warnings about that, very little has been done to curb it?
18:26 Well, look, I think one of the challenges, again, with this Israeli government,
18:31 you have a couple of very extreme ministers, one of whom is the minister of national security, Ben-Gavir.
18:39 And he oftentimes looks like he turns a blind eye to what extremist settlers do.
18:45 Israel presents itself as a rule of law and it has to act that way.
18:49 And with many of the extremist settlers, including those right now, are trying to block deliveries of assistance to Gaza.
18:57 The law needs to be enforced on them. There needs to be more demonstration of that.
19:03 And if there isn't, the administration has a right to single out and sanction some of those individuals.
19:09 A yearlong investigation by The New York Times published in recent days claims to reveal how violent factions inside the settler movement
19:17 have been protected and sometimes abetted by the Israeli government and now pose a grave threat to Palestinians in the occupied territories.
19:25 We found the Times said a government shaken by an internal war, burying reports it commissioned,
19:31 neutering investigations it assigned and silencing whistleblowers, some of them senior officials.
19:37 Did you know about this?
19:40 I did not.
19:41 Does any of it surprise you?
19:44 Over the years, I've always had a sense that there was some protection.
19:50 One of the things that always was troubling is that it was very hard to ever find exact expenditures on a whole settlement and a problems.
20:00 As if the Israeli government knew if it was exposed, it would actually produce a reaction within Israel.
20:07 So I'm not surprised at one level. The scope of it, I have to say, is surprising.
20:14 Mr. Ross, on the ground in Gaza, heavy fighting around the southern city of Rafah, despite the strongest possible warnings from the US.
20:25 Has Israel stopped listening to the White House? The Biden administration said multiple times it wanted to see a credible plan for safeguarding civilians.
20:33 If the Rafah offensive went ahead by May the 15th, at least it was still saying it hadn't seen such a plan.
20:40 Is there anywhere a red line which in which under no circumstances Israel would be allowed to cross by the administration?
20:51 I think that the president has made that clear that if they go into Rafah city, that is a red line that's been crossed without the credible evacuation plan.
21:01 With consequences. There would be consequences.
21:04 That's right. Well, Israel is operating all around Rafah, but not within Rafah city.
21:10 Now and right now, about 800,000 people actually have left. You still leave probably another five or 600,000 who were there.
21:18 So they're still not in the city. I think for the administration, if they were to go into the city, there would be consequences.
21:24 I think the president, the president Biden is someone who when he says something, he tends to mean it.
21:30 So I suspect and it's one of the reasons I suspect the Israelis have not gone in is because that is something that they understand is going to trigger a response.
21:41 And with a price that they probably don't want to pay.
21:44 The Israeli prime minister has made it clear that the prize of a Palestinian state is not on offer to the Palestinians, particularly after what Hamas has done.
21:54 Is there any way that a Palestinian state can, in your view, emerge from all this conflict?
22:02 Well, not in the near term. First of all, the Palestinians are divided between the West Bank and Gaza.
22:09 You're going to have to politically reunify them.
22:13 Look, I my own view is the Palestinian people have a right to self-determination.
22:19 And whether that's a state they choose, that's a state or some kind of confederation, that should be their choice.
22:26 But by the same token, right with rights come responsibilities.
22:31 When we talk about a Palestinian state, we can't have a Palestinian state that's going to be led by Hamas.
22:36 That's certainly not a two state solution. That's a guarantee for a continuing war.
22:41 It can't be a Palestinian state that becomes a member of the Axis of Resistance, what I call the Axis of Misery, being aligned with Iran.
22:50 That's also a guarantee against two states.
22:55 It can't be a Palestinian state that doesn't have institutions, so it'll be a failed state.
22:59 So you need to create rights and responsibilities.
23:03 I would like to see some benchmarks created, some milestones created, all under the rubric that Palestinians have a state in the making and they have to fulfill their responsibilities to be able to achieve their rights.
23:18 Now, obviously, at the same time, if you're creating that kind of set of standards or milestones or obligations on the Palestinian side,
23:27 you have to impose some responsibilities on the Israeli side, including among other things, they cannot act on the ground in the West Bank in a way that makes it impossible to have a Palestinian state.
23:38 But everything I've just said, this is not something you can produce overnight.
23:43 We have to start by having both sides even begin to cooperate in a functional way again.
23:49 We're at a very low ebb. You asked me about was this as difficult a time as I've ever seen in terms of U.S.-Israeli relations.
23:56 I can tell you this is worse between Israelis and Palestinians than at any point on which I worked on this issue, including during the second intifada.
24:05 So we have to get back to some kind of a baseline so we can move from there and move in a direction of peace becoming possible.
24:14 Right now, we're not dealing with a conflict that is seen in political terms.
24:20 We're seeing a conflict that's almost seen in existential terms, and we're going to have to get back to creating a sense of possibility again.
24:27 We're quite a ways from that.
24:29 Can I just raise with you briefly the death in a helicopter accident of the Iranian president, Raisi?
24:36 Any sign of an opportunity or a danger emerging from this accident?
24:44 I don't think it changes things very much.
24:46 I mean, it creates uncertainty within Iran, but the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is a decision maker.
24:54 Raisi was not the decision maker.
24:56 He might be the decision implementer, but he wasn't the decision maker.
25:00 My guess is the supreme leader will emphasize the importance of people participating in the election because he likes to portray that as being an indication of legitimacy.
25:10 The fact that turnouts are so small right now is an indication of how the Iranian public really feels about the Islamic Republic and the regime.
25:18 I think in the near term, their focus will be much more on trying to work out this election, trying to maximize the numbers of people who vote and much less adventures on the outside.
25:30 Dennis Ross, it's been good to have you on Conflict Zone.
25:32 Thank you very much indeed for your time.
25:34 Thank you.
25:35 Good to be with you.
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