Why legal action against alleged Israeli war crimes is so slow

When the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last year accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant of crimes against humanity, it seemed like a watershed moment.

Global anger over Israel's war in Gaza had long been at boiling point, with people demanding justice for the victims of war.

But to this day, they have not been arrested. At the same time, provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice in early 2024 obliging Israel to facilitate the entry and distribution of aid in Gaza appear to have been ignored, according to humanitarian organisations.

Without legal enforcement, the capabilities of the world's top court have come into question and the limitations of international law have became more evident.

In recent months, civil society groups and national legal coalitions have begun to take matters into their own hands. Lawyers, activists and academics at a grassroots level are trying to prosecute and document what they allege to be Israeli war crimes. Some of them have already filed appeals to their domestic law enforcement to investigate Israeli soldiers who may have committed core international crimes in Gaza.

In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, host Nada AlTaher looks at the efforts and challenges of legal mechanisms in delivering justice to Palestinian victims, both on an international scale and in domestic courts. She speaks to former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, legal director and founder of the Public Interest Law Centre in the UK Paul Heron, and Israeli historian Lee Mordechai.