The International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan revealed in an exclusive interview with CNN on Monday.
Khan stated that the ICC’s prosecution team is also seeking warrants for Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as well as two senior Hamas leaders: leader of the Al Qassam Brigades Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri and political leader of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh.
Khan told CNN that the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant include causing extermination, using starvation as a method of warfare, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, and deliberately targeting civilians during the conflict.
The request will now be presented to a panel of ICC judges, who will decide whether to approve it. Should the judges proceed, this could mark the first instance of the ICC
issuing an arrest warrant against a nation’s leader that is a particularly close ally of the United States.
Netanyahu described the ICC’s decision as absurd, asserting that the move was an attack on all of Israel. ‘I reject with disgust the comparison of the prosecutor in the Hague between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas,’ said Netanyahu. ‘With what audacity do you compare Hamas that murdered, burned, butchered, decapitated, raped and kidnapped our brothers and sisters, and the IDF soldiers fighting a just war?’ he asked indignantly.
The decision by the ICC prosecutor has also sparked outrage among Netanyahu’s political rivals. Leader of the opposition Yair Lapid described the application for the arrest warrants as ‘a complete moral failure’.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán—a close ally of Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel—also criticized Khan’s decision, calling it ‘absurd and shameful.’ ‘Such initiatives will not bring the Middle East closer to peace, but only fuel further tensions,’ PM Orbán wrote in a post on X.
The ICC Chief Prosecutor’s proposal against Prime Minister @netanyahu is absurd and shameful. Such initiatives will not bring the Middle East closer to peace, but only fuel further tensions.
— Orbán Viktor (@PM_ViktorOrban) May 20, 2024
The United States reacted similarly. President Joe Biden on Monday described the move as ‘outrageous’. ‘Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence—none—between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,’ Biden said in a statement.
It is important to note that neither Israel nor the United States is a participant in the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2002. This means that the court has no jurisdiction over their territories. However, the ICC claims to have jurisdiction over Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank after Palestinian leaders formally agreed to be bound by the court’s founding principles in 2015.
Furthermore, according to the Rome Statute, should the warrants be granted, any country that is a member of the ICC would be obliged to arrest and extradite Netanyahu, Sinwar, and others to The Hague. This would significantly
restrict international travel for Netanyahu and Gallant,
including to many countries that are among Israel’s closest allies, such as Germany and the United Kingdom.
Hamas reacted to the news, stating that it strongly denounces the attempts of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to equate the victim with the executioner by issuing arrest warrants against a number of Palestinian resistance leaders.
On 7 October 2023, militants led by Hamas killed approximately 1,200 people across several locations in southern Israel and took around 250 hostages to Gaza, where many are still being held. In late 2023, Israel initiated ground operations into the Hamas-controlled territory. According to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, over 35,500 Palestinians have been killed and more than 79,000 injured since then; however, these figures cannot be independently verified.
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