The Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant was quoted today:
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant says he has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, as Israel fights the Hamas terror group.
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed,” Gallant says following an assessment at the IDF Southern Command in Beersheba.
“We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly,” he adds.
Intentionally starving a civilian population is a violation of the Geneva convention and is prohibited under international law.
This question will resolve YES if two conditions are both met by end of 2024:
The seige is carried out largely as described, with the Gaza strip cut off from food/water, fuel and electricity via Israeli-controlled territory (if goods/services can still enter via the border with Egypt, that is not relevant for this condition).
There is a consensus view among experts in international law that this was a war crime.
Even though the minister only mentioned food, cutting off either food or water, in addition to fuel and electricity, will satisfy condition 1. The seige does not have to be perfect for condition 1. to be met: policy mostly but imperfectly followed will still satisfy it. Official policy to allow food, fuel, or electricity selectively, for humanitarian reasons, will mean condition 1 is not met. There may be some grey area here, in which case I will use my judgement.
Condition 2 requires a consensus view among experts in international law that this seige was a war crime. Israel is a party to the Geneva convention and has ratified its four main conventions, but is not a party to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court. Thus, the ICC may not have jurisdiction - it's not clear. In any case, end of 2024 is likely too soon for official judgement by an international court, and so condition 2. will be judged based on the consensus view as I can best discern in the absence of official judgement. I will draw on Wikipedia and seek the views of experts in international law, and am open to other suggestions for how to discern this.
I won't bet on this market.
Edit Oct 9th PST: changed "consensus among the international community" to "consensus among experts in international law", I will refund the losses of those who bet on the distinction.
2nd Edit Oct 9th: clarified that a blockade by Israel still counts even if the Eyptian border is still open.
Possible clarification from creator (AI generated):
Resolution does not require an official trial or court judgement to take place
The ICC arrest warrant and related commentary will be considered as part of evaluating the consensus among experts in international law
A judgement call will be made based on available evidence and expert opinions at market close
1,000
3.00Traders: seeing as we're not far off the close date for this market, and the ICC arrest warrant is a fairly recent development, I'll wait until close to consider it as well as well as commentary and responses to it in the meantime.
Note that the market explicitly expected a judgement call would be needed in the absence of any official judgement, so to address some of the comments below, no, resolution does not hinge on an actual trial taking place.
A trial taking place was a priori unlikely enough, and the timescale for a trial even if it did happen long enough, that it wouldn't have been very useful to make a market that required a trial in order to resolve.
@chrisjbillington research regarding the question in this market is on page 124-130 of this Amnesty International report https://www.amnestyusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/You-Feel-Like-You-Are-Subhuman-Israels-Genocide-Against-Palestinians-in-Gaza.pdf#page124
Here's an article by a collection of western military and legal experts, probably a good proxy for "consensus view of experts in international law". Should settle as no based on this.
@ShakedKoplewitz lol, a bunch of ex-military doesn't count as legal experts, for sure less than the actual legal experts on the ICC (btw you are lucky I actually went through the thing, I automatically ignore anything that starts with the word "antisemitic", bias much)
@Choms the group includes legal and military experts, aka people who actually understand situations like this (unlike the ICC, a political body which as noted in the piece makes repeated basic factual and legal errors).
@Choms (also if you don't understand the concept of antisemitism you probably don't know enough about any of this to have an opinion worth saying)
@ShakedKoplewitz as a citizen of a country that actually abides the Rome convention I disagree with you, and if we are going for personal opinions as you just did, I think all countries not abiding it or who plain dropped out, did so to protect war criminals, so I don't really care what you think about my "understanding" lol
PS: what IS antisemitism is decoupled from the fact when anyone says Israel is (ironically enough) performing a genocide, gets replied "hurr durr you are entisemistststt!!!", so I just ignore the actual word, not the concept ;)
@Choms Israel isn't in the Rome convention because it knew if it was it'd get spurious accusations of war crimes (heck the ICC doesn't even let the fact that it doesn't have jurisdiction stop it, it's not going to let a little thing like facts get in its way). Israel hasn't done any actual war crimes, and has in fact gone to lengths unprecedented I'm human history to supply its enemies with humanitarian aid while those same enemies actively hold it's people hostage for rape and torture. The concept of Israel as some kind of war criminal is so completely ridiculous that the one and only reason it even exists is endemic antisemitism (both direct and second degree, as people who weren't themselves originally antisemitic get their information from antisemitic propaganda).
@ShakedKoplewitz lol sure, if you want to tell yourself that be my guest, I had my fair share of fundamentalists and I don't argue with them anymore :)
@ShakedKoplewitz Israeli hasn’t done any war crimes? Surely you’d agree some IDF members have committed war crimes? They raped a prisoner on camera.
@ShakedKoplewitz no they didn't. Some prison guards allegedly sexually abused a prisoner (although there is some evidence both for and against, like the doctor's report) and are currently standing trial for it. Which, so long as Israel has a system for putting them on trial (which it does, and unusually quickly at that) is not a war crime by Israel. Every country has some rapists and the country isn't itself criminal if it enforces the laws against it.
I’m going to avoid getting sidetracked into a large debate. The market is about whether resources were cut
@GammaLaser no, it's about whether they were cut in a way which constitutes a war crime. Having a border check for freight crossing your national border to a hostile country isn't itself a war crime (if it were then the US is doing one on both Mexico and Canada right now).
(And just to answer your modified original comment, "no they didn't" refers to the "on video" part, which is one reason the evidence genuinely isn't clear. There is enough of it that they're on trial though.)
@GammaLaser as I said, no use debating with fundamentalists (on any spectrum), nothing you say it's gonna change his mind, but as you said going back to the topic of the market, for sure this is not gonna resolve NO because a handful of people (of which most of them are military) write a letter on some blog 😂 when all Rome signatories said they will (obviously) comply the warrant and there's a lot of evidence, if Netanyahu though he didn't do anything wrong he will just get a troop of lawyers and stand for the trial
@Choms generally it takes an actual trial to assume guilt, yes, not just an accusation by a questionable prosecutor that got even basic facts wrong
@ShakedKoplewitz I think you're right. From Wikipedia: "Pre-Trial Chamber I stated that it found reasonable grounds that from "8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024" Netanyahu and Gallant bear criminal responsibility "as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts" and "as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population." Given the updated resolution criteria, I assume the creator would have good reasons to resolve as Yes. Amnesty's recent report is aligned with this conclusion. This is irrespective of whether the ICC is correct or not, antisemitic or not, and whether Israel might end up being cleared from these accusations in the future. As of today, the consensus among "experts" (for what they're worth!) seems to be that yes, Israel committed war crimes by cutting of supplies to Gaza. (edit: just seeing now that the creator commented on that 15h ago, so my message is useless... Wait and see...)
ICC, not ICJ, but still: "The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant include “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict,” Khan told Amanpour." (EXCLUSIVE: ICC seeks arrest warrants against Sinwar and Netanyahu for war crimes over October 7 attack and Gaza war)
@adssx we're talking about a warrant that also mentions a dead man on the same list. It's not exactly fact based.
@AlexCao Who it's run by doesn't affect the expectations of how civilians should be treated in war, so yes, it might be (though that's what this market is asking - I don't know the answer yet).
@chrisjbillington AFAIK most of the aid trucks blocked by IDF were carrying industrial and construction materials, which I think is perfectly reasonable
@AlexCao That may be, but they did block food, water, and fuel - I consider that part of the resolution criteria satisfied. We now await some kind of expert consensus on whether this was a war crime or not. Feel free to link to relevant experts opining whether it was or not, as that's what this market will resolve on.
@chrisjbillington by that logic the US commits war crimes against mexico every day by having border checkpoints for trucks going through the southern border. The nature of the blocks matters, and it's established they were to check for contraband (and, for a few days at the start, because the crossings were non operational), not with the intent of causing mass starvation.