The court rejected arguments by the U.S. and Israel that the ICC does not have jurisdiction, subjecting the officials to potential arrest in 124 countries.
The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their role in Israel’s ongoing military offensive in the Gaza Strip. In its ruling, the court explicitly rejected arguments made by Israel and the U.S. that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Israel. “The acceptance by Israel of the Court’s jurisdiction is not required, as the Court can exercise its jurisdiction on the basis of the territorial jurisdiction of Palestine,” the court said.
“This is a watershed event in the history of international justice. The ICC has never, in over 21 years, indicted a pro-Western official. Indeed, no international court since World War II has done so,” said human rights attorney and war crimes prosecutor Reed Brody. “Up until now, the instruments of international justice have been used almost exclusively to address crimes by defeated adversaries as in the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals, powerless outcasts, or opponents of the West such as Vladimir Putin or Slobodan Milošević."
Alongside the two top Israeli officials, the ICC also issued an arrest warrant for the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Deif, despite Israeli claims that he had been killed earlier this year in an airstrike in the Strip.
In May the ICC announced that the court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan was seeking warrants for senior Israeli and Hamas officials. Among those originally sought for arrest was Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed while reportedly taking part in an ambush of Israeli troops last month.
Today’s statement said that the court had found reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
