The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has announced he is seeking arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as several Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan KC issued a statement this morning proposing that arrest warrants are issued for Mr Netanyahu, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, Hamas’ military chief, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ political bureau.
The application for warrants comes after weeks of Israel’s staunchest allies calling for restraint in its war in Gaza, particularly around the invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians fled to avoid being caught up in the earlier stages of Israel’s attacks.
The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant, two of the three core members of Israel’s war cabinet, include “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare … intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population … wilfully causing great suffering … persecution as a crime against humanity … [and] extermination and/or murder.”
A panel of ICC judges will now consider Mr Khan’s application for the arrest warrants.
If the panel deems it fit to issue the arrests, Mr Netanyahu would be in the same company as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is currently barred from travelling to any of 124 signatories to the ICC after they issued an arrest warrant against him for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Benny Gantz, Israel’s third war cabinet minister, quickly denounced the seeking of arrest warrants as “a crime of historic proportion”.
“Drawing parallels between the leaders of a democratic country determined to defend itself from despicable terror to leaders of a blood-thirsty terror organisation (Hamas) is a deep distortion of justice and blatant moral bankruptcy,” Mr Gantz said.
More than 35,562 Palestinians have been killed and 79,652 wounded during Israel’s war in Gaza, according to the latest update from the local health ministry. They maintain that the majority of the casualties are women and children.
The charges against Sinwar, Haniyeh and al-Masri all relate to Hamas’ 7 October attack on Israeli soil and the alleged mistreatment of hostages taken into Gaza after the assault.
Around 1,200 people are believed to have been killed during the attack, while 245 people were taken hostage, 120 of which remain in Gaza.
Mr Khan said the crimes of the three leaders include “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention”.
He alleges that the three Hamas leaders are “criminally responsible for the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas”.
A senior Hamas official told Reuters after the statement was made that it “equates the victim with the executioner”.
Sami Abu Zuhri also said the ICC decision gives encouragement to Israel to continue its “war of extermination” in Gaza.