ICC Warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, for war crimes.
Karim Khan KC said there were reasonable grounds to believe that both men bore criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity from the day of Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October onwards.
Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, along with the group’s military chief Mohammed Deif, are also wanted for arrest.
ICC judges will now decide whether they believe the evidence is sufficient to issue arrest warrants, which could take weeks or months.
Mr Netanyahu said in a statement that he rejected “with disgust The Hague prosecutor’s comparison between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas”.
US President Joe Biden described the ICC prosecutor’s move as “outrageous”.
Israel’s foreign minister, Israel Katz, called the move by Mr Khan an “unrestrained frontal assault” on the victims of the 7 October attacks and a “historical disgrace that will be remembered forever”.
He announced that a particular command centre would be set up to fight the decision, which he said was intended to tie Israel’s hands and deny it the right to self-defence.
Hamas demanded the “cancellation of all arrest warrants issued against leaders of the Palestinian resistance” and denounced what it called Mr Khan’s “attempts … to equate the victim with the executioner”.
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.
” The crimes against humanity charged were part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel by Hamas and other armed groups,” he said in a statement.
” Some of these crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day.”
Hamas, he said, had inflicted “unfathomable pain through calculated cruelty and extreme callousness”.
He said Israel’s prime minister and defence minister were suspected of crimes, including the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, murder, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, and extermination.
Mr Khan said his office had evidence that Israel had “intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival”.
Israel, he said, has a right to defend itself but not by “intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious injury to body or health of the civilian population”, which he said were criminal acts.
Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz – a political rival of Mr Netanyahu – denounced the prosecutor’s decision.
” Drawing parallels between the leaders of a democratic country determined to defend itself from despicable terror to leaders of a bloodthirsty terror organization is a deep distortion of justice and blatant moral bankruptcy,” he said.
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.
Neither Israel nor Qatar are members of the ICC, but the Palestinian territories were admitted as a member state in 2015. If warrants are issued, the ICC relies on member countries to conduct an arrest.
No Western-style democracy has had an ICC arrest warrant issued for its leader before. Should Mr Netanyahu become the first, it will deeply alarm Israel and its allies, as well as test the powers of limitations of the ICC.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also issued a statement rejecting the ICC’s announcement and said the court “has no jurisdiction over this matter” in the eyes of the US.
International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said Monday that he was filing applications for arrest warrants at the ICC for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, in addition to three senior Hamas leaders.
Khan lists the Hamas leaders as Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s political leader; Yahya Sinwar, the military commander in the Gaza Strip; and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, the leader of the group’s military wing.
The applications will be reviewed by ICC judges, who will determine whether the standard for the issuance of arrest warrants has been met amid Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza.
” Today we once again underline that international law and the laws of armed conflict apply to all,” Khan said in a statement. “No foot soldier, commander, civilian leader– no one– can act with impunity. Nothing can justify wilfully depriving human beings, including so many women and children, of the necessities required for life. Nothing can justify the taking of hostages or the targeting of civilians.”
The warrants come after a months-long investigation into both Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel and Israel’s military response in the Gaza Strip. Hamas, long designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and Israel, had ruled over Gaza for almost two decades when the current war began.
In a statement on Monday, President Biden called the move by the ICC “outrageous.”.
” Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas,” Mr. Biden said. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”.
Both Israeli officials and Hamas also criticized the ICC chief prosecutor’s move.
In a video statement in Hebrew on social media, Netanyahu said that the ICC actions were “directed against the entire state of Israel.”.
” I reject with disgust the Hague prosecutor’s comparison between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas. This is a complete distortion of reality,” Netanyahu said. “This is what the new anti-semitism looks like. It has moved from the campuses in the West to the court in the Hague.”.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said the announcement was “beyond outrageous and shows the extent to which the international judicial system is in danger of collapsing.”.
Herzog said the move “emboldens terrorists around the world, and violates all the basic rules of the court … Any attempt to draw parallels between these atrocious terrorists and the democratically elected government of Israel– working to fulfil its duty to defend and protect its citizens entirely in adherence to the principles of international law– is outrageous and can not be accepted by anyone.”.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group that represents the families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, applauded the ICC move against Hamas but said it was “not comfortable with the equivalence drawn between Israel’s leadership and the terrorists of Hamas. We believe the way to prove this distinction to the world is by immediately entering into negotiations that will free the hostages– the living for rehabilitation, and the deceased for burial.”.
Hamas also rejected the ICC prosecutor’s move, saying in a statement that it “creates equality between the victims and the executioner,” and it called on the court to reverse its decision, according to the Reuters news agency.
Khan said his team believes Netanyahu and Gallant bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the starvation of civilians, willfully causing great suffering, willful killing, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, extermination and murder, persecution and other inhumane acts during the war against Hamas.
” We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population under State policy. In our assessment, these crimes continue to this day,” Khan said.
He said his office collected evidence, including survivor and witness testimony and authenticated video that “shows that Israel has intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival.”.
” Israel, like all States, has a right to take action to defend its population,” Khan said. “That right, however, does not absolve Israel or any State of its obligation to comply with international humanitarian law. Notwithstanding any military goals they may have, the means Israel chose to achieve them in Gaza– namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious injury to the body or health of the civilian population– are criminal.”.
Health officials in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory say Israel’s aerial and ground operation in Gaza since Oct. 7 has killed more than 35,000 people, most of them women and children.
Netanyahu has acknowledged a death toll in Gaza of 30,000 people but says about half of those killed have been militants.
Khan said his team believes Sinwar, Haniyeh and Al-Masri bear criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination, murder, taking hostages, rape and other acts of sexual violence, torture, other inhumane acts, cruel treatment and outrages upon personal dignity.
” We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel by Hamas and other armed groups under organizational policies. Some of these crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day,” Khan said.
He said his office interviewed victims and survivors and collected evidence, including videos, and found that “these individuals planned and instigated the commission of crimes on 7 October 2023, and have through their actions, including personal visits to hostages shortly after their kidnapping, acknowledged their responsibility for those crimes,” Khan said.
Khan said that looking at medical records, video evidence and interviews with victims and survivors, his office believes “there are reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape while being held in captivity,” Khan said, noting that his office was still investigating “reports of sexual violence committed on 7 October.”.
Hamas killed about 1,200 people in its unprecedented assault and kidnapped roughly 240 others, about 100 of whom are still believed to be alive and held hostage inside Gaza.
What is the ICC?
Several international treaties- the Geneva Conventions and the Geneva Protocol being two of the most important- establish international legal standards for warfare. Any violation of those standards is a war crime that can be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court, known as the ICC, in the Hague and can result in imprisonment for perpetrators.
The International Criminal Court, founded in 2002, was established by the international treaty known commonly as the Rome Statute. It tries individuals for serious crimes in four broad categories: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and aggression.
What nations are ICC signatories, and where does it have jurisdiction?
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the 124 countries that States Parties to the Rome Statute and their citizens, and neither the United States nor Israel are signatories.
Khan has assessed that the court does have jurisdiction to prosecute individuals over actions committed in the Palestinian territories and Palestinians in Israel, however, because the U.N. recognizes the State of Palestine as a signatory to the Rome Statute.
” The territorial scope of this jurisdiction extends to Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” Khan said, adding that his office assesses that the ICC has jurisdiction over Palestinians in Israel and Israelis acting in Palestinian territories.
The International Criminal Court 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 over the October 7 attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, the court’s prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Monday.
Khan said the ICC’s prosecution team is also seeking warrants for Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders– Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades who is better known as Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ political leader.
The warrants against the Israeli politicians mark the first time the ICC has targeted the top leader of a close ally of the United States. The decision puts Netanyahu in the company of Russian President Vladimir Putin, for whom the ICC issued an arrest warrant over Moscow’s war on Ukraine, and the Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi, who was facing an arrest warrant from the ICC for alleged crimes against humanity at the time of his capture and killing in October 2011.
By applying for arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders in the same action, Khan’s office risks attracting criticism that it places a terror organization and an elected government on an equivalent footing.
A panel of ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application for the arrest warrants.
Khan said the charges against Sinwar, Haniyeh and al-Masri include “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”.
” The world was shocked on the 7th of October when people were ripped from their bedrooms, from their homes, from the different kibbutzim in Israel,” Khan told Amanpour, adding that “people have suffered enormously.”.
Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people across several locations in southern Israel on October 7 and took some 250 hostages into Gaza. Many of the hostages are still being held in Gaza– Khan told Amanpour this meant crimes continued to be committed against “so many innocent Israelis … that are held hostage by Hamas and families that are waiting for their return.”.
Khan told Amanpour his team has a “variety of evidence” to support the application for arrest warrants against Sinwar, Haniyeh and al-Masri, including authenticated video footage and photographs from the attacks as well as evidence from eyewitnesses and survivors.
Khan said Israel had “every right and indeed an obligation to get hostages back, but you must do so by complying with the law.”.
Responding to the announcement by Khan, Hamas said in a statement that it “strongly condemns the attempts of the ICC Prosecutor to equate victims with aggressors by issuing arrest warrants against several Palestinian resistance leaders without legal basis.”.
” Hamas calls on the ICC Prosecutor to issue arrest warrants against all war criminals among the occupation leaders, officers, and soldiers who participated in crimes against the Palestinian people, and demands the cancellation of all arrest warrants issued against Palestinian resistance leaders,” the group added.
‘ Nobody is above the law’.
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.
” The fact that Hamas fighters need water doesn’t justify denying water from all the civilian population of Gaza,” he added.
More than 35,500 Palestinians have been killed and more than 79,000 wounded in Gaza since October 7, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said on Monday. CNN can not independently verify the figures.
Netanyahu called the decision “a political outrage.”.
” They will not deter us, and we will continue in the war until the hostages are released and Hamas is destroyed,” he said at a meeting of the parliamentary group of his Likud party.
Other Israeli officials echoed his sentiments. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s war cabinet, criticized Khan’s decision immediately after it was announced, saying that Israel was fighting “with one of the strictest moral codes in history while complying with international law and boasting a robustly independent judiciary.”.
” Drawing parallels between the leaders of a democratic country determined to defend itself from despicable terror to leaders of a bloodthirsty terror organization is a deep distortion of justice and blatant moral bankruptcy,” he said, adding that the decision by the prosecutors “is in itself a crime of historical proportion to be remembered for a generation.”.
The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, said the application for the arrest warrants was “a complete moral failure.”
” We can not accept the outrageous comparison between Netanyahu and Sinwar … We will not remain silent,” he said.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog called it “beyond outrageous.”.
When reports surfaced last month that the ICC chief prosecutor was considering this course of action, Netanyahu said that any ICC arrest warrants against senior Israeli government and military officials “would be an outrage of historic proportions” and that Israel “has an independent legal system that rigorously investigates all violations of the law.”.
When asked by Amanpour about Netanyahu’s comments, Khan said, “Nobody is above the law.”
He said that if Israel disagrees with the ICC, “they are free, notwithstanding their jurisdiction objections, to raise a challenge before the judges of the court, and that’s what I advise them to do.”.
Israel and the United States are not members of the ICC. 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.
The ICC announcement on Monday is separate from the case that is currently being heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over an accusation from South Africa that Israel was committing genocide in its war against Hamas following the October 7 attacks.
The ICJ considers cases involving countries and nations, while the ICC is a criminal court that brings cases against individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Monday’s announcement is not the first time that the ICC has acted on Israel. In March 2021, Khan’s office launched an investigation into possible crimes committed in the Palestinian territories since June 2014 in Gaza and the West Bank.
Located in The Hague, Netherlands, and created by a treaty called the Rome Statute, which was first brought before the United Nations, the ICC operates independently. Most countries—124 of them—are parties to the treaty, but there are notable exceptions, including Israel, the US, and Russia.
That means that if the court grants Khan’s application and issues arrest warrants for the five men, any member country would have to arrest them and deport them to The Hague.
Under the court’s rules, all signatories of the Rome Statute are obliged to cooperate fully with its decisions. This would make it extremely difficult for Netanyahu and Gallant to travel internationally, including to many countries that are among Israel’s closest allies, including Germany and the United Kingdom.
Sinwar, Haniyeh and al-Masri have been officially designated as global terrorists by the US, meaning they are under travel bans, asset freezes and sanctions. The US, the UK, Japan, Canada as well as the European Union and others have designated Hamas as a terror group and imposed sanctions on its leaders.
Lawmakers in the United States have slammed the International Criminal Court’s (ICC’s) decision to seek arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials accused of war crimes in Gaza, with some Republicans threatening to impose “consequences” against the international tribunal.
Joe Biden was less aggressive in his opposition to Monday’s announcement from ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, but the US president still labelled the move “outrageous”.
Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three senior Hamas officials.
Khan accused the Israeli leaders of bearing “criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including intentional attacks against civilians, willful killings and starvation of civilians as a weapon of war.
The response in Washington, DC– where Israel enjoys staunch support among lawmakers from both the Democratic and Republican parties– was swift.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton said Monday’s announcement shows that the ICC– which is tasked with investigating war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocities– is “a farce”.
” My colleagues and I look forward to making sure neither Khan, his associates, nor their families will ever set foot again in the United States,” Cotton wrote on X.
Republican Congressman Anthony D’Esposito said the ICC was “playing with fire”, writing on social media that “there will be serious consequences if they proceed.”.
Brian Mast, another Republican in the House of Representatives, said: “America doesn’t recognize the International Criminal Court, but the court sure as hell will recognize what happens when you target our allies.”.
Neither the US nor Israel are parties to the Rome Statute, under which the ICC was established, and neither recognize the jurisdiction of the court.
Palestine, a nonmember observer state at the United Nations, formally accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction in 2015, extending the court’s authority to investigate atrocities committed in the occupied Palestinian territory.
Several Republican legislators had warned Khan in late April against seeking arrest warrants against Netanyahu or other Israeli officials after reports began to circulate that such a request was imminent.
” Such actions are illegitimate and lack legal basis, and if carried out, will result in severe sanctions against you and your institution,” they wrote in a letter that was made public this month.
The letter was signed by a dozen top Republican senators, including Cotton, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Tim Scott.
” Target Israel and we will target you. If you move forward … we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States. You have been warned,” it concluded.
Intimidation must ‘cease immediately’, Khan says.
For months, rights groups and Palestinian advocates had urged Khan and the ICC to seek arrest warrants for Israeli leaders involved in the country’s war and siege on the Gaza Strip.
Israeli attacks on the coastal enclave have killed more than 35,000 Palestinians since the war began in early October, prompting accusations that Israel was committing genocide.
Severe Israeli restrictions on water, food, medical supplies, fuel and other critical aid from entering Gaza have also created a humanitarian crisis.
During his announcement on Monday, Khan said: “Israel, like all states, has a right to defend its population,” but that does not “absolve Israel of its obligations to comply with international humanitarian law”.
He also said, “It is critical at this moment that my office and all parts of the court continue to conduct our work with complete independence and impartiality.
” And I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or influence the court officials cease immediately improperly. Under provisions of Article 70 of the Rome Statute, my office will not hesitate to act if such conduct continues and persists.”.
Article 70 makes “impeding, intimidating or corruptly influencing an official of the Court to force or persuade the official not to perform, or to perform improperly, his or her duties” an offence over which the court has jurisdiction.
Biden administration’s position.
Biden rejected what he portrayed as an attempt to compare the actions of Israel and Hamas.
While Biden came into office in 2021 pledging to re-engage with international institutions after his predecessor, Donald Trump’s isolationist stance, the US continues to have a fraught relationship with the ICC.
Last week, a spokesperson for the US Department of State said Washington does not believe the ICC has jurisdiction over the situation in Gaza.
” We have made clear that we do not believe the ICC has jurisdiction in this case and oppose their investigation,” Matthew Miller told reporters.
The Biden administration has provided largely unwavering diplomatic and military support to Israel during its war on Gaza, prompting widespread protests and criticism.
Some members of Biden’s own Democratic Party have joined calls for the US president to cut off aid to Israel. Others also have expressed support for the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders, stressing that international law must be applied evenly.