Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, yesterday applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the country’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant. Khan said he was also seeking the arrest and prosecution of the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, the group’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and the Hamas military chief, Mohammed Deif.
The ICC prosecutor said his office had applied to the World Court’s pre-trial chamber for arrest warrants for the military and political leaders on both sides for crimes committed during Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza.
While the Hamas leaders were wanted for crimes of murder, hostage-taking, rape, sexual assault and torture, Netanyahu and Gallant were accused of extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, and deliberately targeting civilians. “These acts demand accountability,” Khan’s office said.
However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has furiously condemned the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor for seeking arrest warrants for him alongside Hamas’s leaders over alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict.
Netanyahu said he rejected with disgust that “democratic Israel” had been compared with what he called “mass murderers”. His comments have been echoed by US President Joe Biden, who said there was no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
The chief ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Gallant on Tuesday described the ICC’s arrest warrants against him and the prime minister as a “disgraceful” attempt to interfere in the war. The ICC is also seeking a warrant for Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, for war crimes.
The accusations against the Israeli and Hamas leaders stem from the events of 7 October, when waves of Hamas gunmen attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 252 others back to Gaza as hostages. The attack triggered the current war, in which at least 35,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
As Israel, Hamas has also made its own demand for “the cancellation of all arrest warrants issued against leaders of the Palestinian resistance”.
“Hamas strongly denounces the attempts of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to equate the victim with the executioner,” the group said. The group also complained that the application for warrants against Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant had come “seven months late”, and that other Israeli political and military leaders had not been named alongside them.
Mr Khan accused the Hamas leaders of having committed crimes including extermination, murder, hostage taking, rape and sexual violence, and torture.
