The issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former War Minister, Yoav Gallant, on November 21, descended like a lightning bolt on the two men, neither of whom figured they’d ever face justice for crimes they vehemently deny.

Equally shaken up – some ready and willing to fulfill their duty to the world’s top criminal court; others hedging their bets – were the 125 State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), soon to be tasked with executing warrants against the two Israeli leaders, and other criminal targets surely in ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s sights, once warrants have been certified and communicated to ICC member states by the Court Registry.

This past week, at the sprawling World Forum Convention Center, in The Hague, delegates of those countries gathered for the 23rd Session of the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties (ASP), the representative body that governs and supervises the implementation of the ICC’s founding treaty, the 2002 Rome Statute, ultimately ensuring that the perpetrators of the most serious international crimes are arrested, tried and jailed.

Among the crimes Netanyahu and Gallant have been charged with, in warrants classified ‘secret’: “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts,” all “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”

Suggesting the crime of genocide – without specifying this crime of international crimes — ICC Pre-Trial Chamber judges cited “reasonable grounds to believe [Netanyahu and Gallant] intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival.”

On the sidelines of last week’s ASP, dozens of side panels featured presentations by international legal scholars, human rights advocates and citizen observers with stories to tell. One of those sessions focused on the destruction of Gaza’s health care system, relentlessly pounded into finer and finer grades of rubble by US bombs and missiles dropped by Israeli jet fighters.

One of the panelists in that session was a physician named Junaid Sultan, a Hull, UK-based cardiovascular surgeon.

Listen to Junaid Sultan’s presentation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Dr. Junaid Sultan

The core of last week’s 23rd session of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, in the Dutch administrative capital, The Hague, consisted of brief presentations by State Party delegates. The only one to speak about Israel’s war on Gaza was the Minister of Justice for the southwest African nation of Namibia — Yvonne Dausab.

Listen to Yvonne Dausab’s presentation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

Raji Sourani

At another, standing room-only panel session, Palestinian human rights activist Raji Sourani pounded his fist on the table, calling on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its brutal crimes against the Palestinian people. Sourani is the Director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Listen to Raji Sourani’s presentation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.