The challenge of witnessing a historic event in real time isn’t to notice it. That’s the easy part. What’s hard is to understand its meaning for the future, which is what historic events are really all about. Recent news from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague have confirmed that rule.

Its prosecutor, Karim Khan, has applied for arrest warrants that will make history one way or the other. The official application is a long document, but its key points can be summarized quickly. With regard to what Khan describes as “an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas running in parallel,” he accuses the senior Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri (aka Deif), and Ismail Haniyeh of a list of crimes against humanity and war crimes: extermination, murder, hostage taking, sexual violence (including rape), torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and other inhumane acts.

Khan also accuses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Galant of a similar set of crimes against humanity and war crimes: starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury, cruel treatment, willful killing, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, extermination and/or murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.

Applying for the warrants is not the same as the ICC actually issuing them. For that to happen, three of its judges, sitting as a pre-trial chamber, have to grant Khan’s applications. But this fact makes little difference. First, because rejection of such applications at this stage is, as legal experts agree, “very rare.”

Second, and more importantly, the political impact of Khan’s request alone is already profound and irreversible. Even if his applications were to fail in the pre-trial chamber, such an outcome would only damage the ICC’s already fragile credibility, especially if it were to act with obvious bias, by, for instance, granting Khan’s request regarding the Hamas leaders but not for the Israeli ones. In such an improbable scenario, the message of the rejected warrant applications would continue reverberating; indeed, it would only become even more resonant.

But what is that message and what will be its main effects? It is certain that they will be political rather than strictly judicial, because one thing that will not happen – at least not soon or easily – is actual arrests. The ICC is special in that, based on its foundational Rome Statute of 1998, it is the only permanent international tribunal empowered to pursue individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. (Unlike the older International Court of Justice, also based in The Hague, which can deal with similar crimes but only while targeting states. Israel as a state is, of course, already the subject of ongoing ICJ processes, likely to receive a boost from the ICC joining the fray.) However, the ICC does not have its own police force to detain suspects and instead has to rely on the 124 states that have signed up to the Rome Statute. For both the Hamas and Israeli leaders in question, the warrants are likely to merely make traveling more complicated, at least for now.

There are many other good reasons to be skeptical about Khan’s move. This is very far from some simple, Hollywood-style comeuppance for the bad guys. For one thing, it’s very late. Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza – and the West Bank as well, with less but ever-increasing intensity – has been going on for seven months.

Even cautious jurists must act much........

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