Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and former defense minister, as well as the military commander of Hamas.
A statement said the pre-trial panel rejected Israel’s challenges to the court’s jurisdiction and issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant.
An arrest warrant was also issued for Mohammed Deif of Hamas, although Israel said he was killed in an airstrike in Gaza in July.
The judges said there was a “reasonable basis” for the three men to be held “criminally responsible” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas. Both Israel and Hamas deny this accusation.
The Israeli prime minister’s office condemned the ICC’s decision as “anti-Semitic”, while Hamas said the arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant set an “important historical precedent”.
The impact of these orders will partly depend on whether the ICC’s 124 member states – which do not include Israel or its ally the United States – decide to enforce them.
Netanyahu’s most recent trip abroad was to the US in July. Last year, he visited several other countries, including the UK.
The ICC has been part of the global justice system since 2002. The ICC has the authority to prosecute those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes on the territory of participating countries. Rome, the treaty establishing the ICC.
Israel is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction, but the court ruled in 2021 that it has jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza because the secretary-general The United Nations has accepted the Palestinians’ accession to the Rome Statute.
In May, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan sought arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, Deif and two other slain Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar.
Although Israel believes Deif is dead, the courtroom said it had been informed by the ICC prosecution that it had no authority to determine whether he was killed or alive.
The prosecutor’s case against them stems from the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas gunmen attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.
According to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, Israel responded to the attack by launching a military campaign to eliminate Hamas, in which at least 44,000 people were killed in Gaza.
for Deifthe chamber found reasonable grounds to believe that he was “responsible for murder against humanity; annihilation; torture; and rape and other forms of sexual violence; as well as the war crimes of murder, cruelty, and torture; take hostages; insults personal dignity; and rape and other forms of sexual violence.”
They also said there were reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity were “part of a widespread and systematic attack directed by Hamas and other armed groups against Israeli civilians.”
For Netanyahu and Gallantwho was replaced as defense secretary earlier this month, the chamber found reasonable grounds to believe that they were “each criminally responsible for the following crimes as accomplices to committing acts in conjunction with others: the war crime of causing famine as a method of killing”. war; and crimes against humanity such as murder, repression and other inhumane acts.”
It also found reasonable grounds to believe that “each person is criminally responsible as a civilian superior for the war crime of knowingly directing an attack against civilians.”
The Israeli prime minister’s office said Israel “completely rejects the false and unreasonable accusations of the International Criminal Court”.
It condemned the ICC decision as anti-Semitic and that “a modern Dreyfus trial” would “end the same way” – a reference to the wrongful conviction of a Jewish military officer for treason fabricated in France in the 19th century caused a national crisis.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not give in to pressure. He will continue to pursue all the goals that Israel sets out to achieve in its just war against Hamas and the Iranian terrorist axis,” the statement added.
There was no immediate response from Gallant. But in May, he strongly rejected the ICC prosecutor’s request for an arrest warrant, saying it had drawn a “despicable” comparison between Israel and Hamas and had tried to deny Israel’s right to self-defense. his country.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog called the chamber’s decision “outrageous” and said the ICC had “turned universal justice into a laughing stock for the whole world.”
“This decision chose the side of terrorism and evil over democracy and freedom, and turned the justice system itself into a humanitarian shield for Hamas’s crimes against humanity,” he added.
Hamas welcomed the arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, saying it “constitutes an important historical precedent and a correction to the long line of historical injustice against our people”.
It also called on countries around the world to enforce the orders and make efforts to stop what it called “genocide against defenseless civilians in the Gaza Strip.”
Israel has vehemently denied that its forces are committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
