How does the ICC relate to the current Palestinian/Israel conflict?

The United Nations, along with most of the world, has condemned Israel's assault on Gaza. A recent article in The Guardian discusses the possibility of the issue being brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a war crimes case. Unfortunately, the issue falls under the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rather than the ICC, because neither side has signed the Rome statute of the ICC. This could be an argument for why the United States ought to join the court: with US support, the ICC could hear the case if the UN security council were to refer it to the court (which would be impossible right now due to the US's veto power on the council and its completely pro-Israel stance). This is definitely an issue of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 900 Palestinians have died, humanitarian aid has been cut off, and Israel is firing white phosphorous in Gaza. Because of the apparent powerlessness of the UN, ICJ, and ICC, there's nothing to stop this. Could the ICC do something if it had US support? Maybe not, but it would at least have the same power as a tribunal, so it might be able to at least stop some of the violence. Instead we have to stand by and watch as hundreds of people are killed and the perpetrators go unpunished until a tribunal is held after the fact. If nothing else, the ICC's status as a permanent court would enable it to take action faster than an ad hoc tribunal. But it can't, because (among other reasons) the US won't back it up. Meanwhile, innocent people are being killed every day.

ICC aff case

Aff case
I affirm Resolved: The United States ought to submit to the jurisdiction of an international court designed to prosecute crimes against humanity.

Resolutional Analysis: The resolution refers to an unspecified international court. To bring clarity to the debate, we should assume that this international court refers to the current International Criminal Court (ICC). The resolution refers to the ICC because it is already contextualized by the words United States, putting it in a real-world scenario, and because it makes the debate relevant, as the United States has chosen not to join the ICC.

Definitions:
Ought: Used to express obligation, advisability, natural expectation, or logical consequence
Submit: To yield to governance or authority
Jurisdiction: The power, right, or authority to interpret and apply the law
International: Active, known, or reaching beyond national boundaries
Crimes against Humanity: M. Cherif Bassiouni, a United Nations war crimes expert and professor of Law at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, defines crimes against humanity as follows:
(1) they refer to specific acts of violence against persons irrespective of whether the person is a national or non-national and irrespective of whether these acts are committed in time of war or time of peace, and
(2) these acts must be the product of persecution against an identifiable group of persons irrespective of the make-up of that group or the purpose of the persecution. Such a policy can also be manifested by the “widespread or systematic” conduct of the perpetrators, which results in the commission of the specific crimes contained in the definition.
As Bassiouni explains, this definition consists of the definitions common to eleven international texts defining crimes against humanity, including the statute of the ICC.

Value: Justice - each their due
Because the United States assumes that people are due life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, then our primary value must be justice, in order to ensure that people receive those dues.

Criterion: Protection of Human Rights
Because the primary goal of the United States is to ensure that justice is maintained, and each receives their due, we are obligated to act to protect the human rights that people are due. Therefore we must help prosecute those who are guilty of crimes against humanity because they violated those rights.

Contention 1: The ICC is an acceptable substitute for United States Criminal Court
a) The ICC's rules are very similar to those of the United States, and could be considered constitutional if altered only slightly. Furthermore, the United States helped create some of the statutes of the ICC. For example, in an article titled "The Constitutionality of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court," found in the Spring 2008 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, David Scheffer and Ashley Cox explain:
[T]he United States actively participated in further negotiations on the Rules of Procedure and Evidence and the Elements of Crime for the ICC. Both of these documents, upon which the U.S. delegation had insisted in Rome and to which the delegation had made major contributions, such as preparing the first draft of the Elements of Crimes and leading negotiations thereafter, were adopted by consensus, joined by the United States, in June 2000.

b) Bassiouni's definition of crimes against humanity includes the statutes of the ICC, as well as statutes from past tribunals on the same subject, some of which the United States has participated in, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. If the court's definition coincides with definitions employed by the United States in the past, then the court is clearly an acceptable standard of justice when it comes to punishing crimes against humanity.

Contention 2: The United States is obligated to join the court, both on a moral level and by the constitution
a) The constitution advocates the enforcement of justice by the United States in international matters. Once again, from Scheffer and Cox:
The Constitution is a document of enumerated powers, and there is a very powerful one that often goes unnoticed. Article I, Section 8, Clause 10 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to "define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations." Particularly with respect to atrocity crimes, it would be an entirely logical and warranted exercise of such constitutional power to create, in concert with other governments, an international criminal court that defines, prosecutes, and punishes such incontrovertible "Offences against the Law of Nations," namely, atrocity crimes, and to legislate that such an international court's judgments and sentences be given effect in the United States to the same extent as they are recognized by and enforced in other State Parties to the Rome Statute.
Additionally, there are crimes punishable by the ICC that are not present in United States law, and would therefore go unpunished under the United States system. Many international crimes are currently undefined in US law, and some of these include crimes against humanity, which represents a violation of human rights if ignored.

b) The ICC would provide accountability that the United States needs in order to legitimately act on a world scale
The jurisdiction of the United States does not extend beyond our own territories. We fully recognize the sovereignty of other governments in the world. However, the United States frequently takes action in other countries in the world by trying to overthrow governments. We cannot be allowed to act on other countries without being subject to the jurisdiction of other countries. For example, consider the World Court case Nicaragua v. United States in 1986. The court ruled that the United States had supported the contra rebels and mined Nicaragua's harbors, which represented a violation of international law. However, the United States refused to recognize the legitimacy of the world court in the case, and didn't comply with the verdict. Because the United States acted against another country, and supported rebels who violated human rights, we had violated our own value of justice. However, we refused to submit to the court, and thus justice was never achieved. The ICC and the World Court are separate organizations, but the point remains the same: for the United States to act in a just manner on a global scale necessitates its being under the jurisdiction of a world court.

I now stand open for cross-examination.


Blocks:
Neg argument: An international court could be composed of just China and Russia, or include nations hostile to the United States, so we obviously shouldn't join.
Aff response: The resolution is contextualized by the United States, and so there's no reason to look to a hypothetical court rather than the one that currently exists. And the ICC as it currently exists contains 108 countries, many of which are allies with the United States, and none of which are hostile towards it. (Card if needed, from Scheffer and Cox: As of October 1, 2008, there will be 108 State Parties to the Rome Statute. These include almost every major ally of the United States, many nations that are considered friends, and none that are characterized as evil, Communist, or adversarial. They consist of all but one of the European Union nations, Canada, Mexico, most of Latin America and the Caribbean, a majority of African countries, and sixteen Asia-Pacific nations, including Australia, Japan, and the Republic of Korea.)

Neg argument: Joining the court would violate US national Sovereignty
Aff response: The ICC is limited in its jurisdiction to prosecuting crimes that the country in question is unable or unwilling to do so. Provided that the United States modifies our its own laws to cover international crimes against humanity, and provided that the United States follows its own principles of justice and prosecutes people accordingly, then the ICC will have no grounds for overriding the United States.