- author, jeremy bowen
- role, international editor
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reacted angrily to news that an arrest warrant could be sought for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
It was a “moral outrage of historic proportions,” he said, as Israel was “fighting a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that had carried out the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
In a scathing personal attack, Prime Minister Netanyahu described the International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, as one of the “great anti-Semites of our time.”
Mr. Khan, he said, is like the judge in Nazi Germany who denied Jews their basic rights and made the Holocaust possible. His decision to seek arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister and defense minister “relentlessly pours gasoline on the fire of anti-Semitism raging around the world.”
Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke in English in a video released by his office. He does so when he wants to get his message to the foreign audience in the United States that matters most to him.
image source, Light Rocket (via Getty Images)
The anger expressed by the Prime Minister and echoed by Israel's political leaders was carefully chosen in a statement issued by Mr. Khan, Counsel to the British King and Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Created by pages of legal jargon.
Added word by word, line by line, it becomes a devastating series of allegations against three of Hamas' most prominent leaders and Israel's prime minister and defense minister.
At the heart of Khan's statement justifying the request for an arrest warrant is his determination to apply international law and the laws of armed conflict, no matter who the enemy is.
“No one can act with impunity: infantrymen, commanders, civilian leaders.” He said the law cannot be applied selectively. If that happens, “it will create the conditions for collapse.”
It is the decision by both sides to subject their actions to norms of international law that has caused so much anger and not just in Israel.
US President Joe Biden said it was “outrageous” to apply for an arrest warrant. “There was no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.”
Hamas claimed that the ICC prosecutor was “equating the victim with the executioner” and demanded that the charges against its leaders be withdrawn. The newspaper said the request for an arrest warrant against Israeli leadership came seven months too late after “thousands of crimes have occurred under Israeli occupation.”
Khan does not directly compare the two countries, other than to state that both countries have committed a series of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
He also stressed that the war is taking place in the context of “an international armed conflict between Israel and Palestine, and a non-international armed conflict between Israel and Hamas.”
The court treats Palestine as a state because of its UN observer status, which means it was able to sign the Rome Statute that created the ICC.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has declared that the Palestinians will never achieve independence on his watch.
Rather than seeing a disgraceful and false parallel between “these brutal terrorists and the democratically elected government of Israel,” as Israeli President Isaac Herzog said, human rights groups are calling the ICC He applauds the way prosecutors are trying to apply the law to both sides. .
Butzelm, head of Israel's main human rights group, said the warrant showed that “Israel is rapidly falling into moral rock bottom.”
He added: “The international community is sending a signal to Israel that it can no longer sustain its policy of violence, killing and destruction without accountability.”
Human rights campaigners have long complained that Western powers, led by the United States, turn a blind eye to Israel's violations of international law, even as they condemn and sanction other countries not in their own camp.
They believe the actions Khan and his team are taking are long overdue.
Khan said three key Hamas leaders committed war crimes including extermination, murder, hostage taking, rape and torture.
Those named include Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Mohamed Deif, commander of the Qassam Brigades military wing, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas's political bureau.
As part of the investigation, Karim Khan and his team interviewed victims and survivors of the October 7 attack.
He said Hamas had attacked basic human values, “distorting the love within a family, the deepest bond between parents and children, to inflict untold suffering through calculated cruelty and extreme ruthlessness.”
Khan said Israel has the right to defend itself. However, the existence of an “unconscionable crime” does not mean that “Israel is exempt from its obligation to comply with international humanitarian law.”
He said the failure to do so justified the issuance of arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant on charges including starvation, murder and extermination of civilians as a weapon of war and intentional attacks against civilians.
Since the start of Israel's response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, President Biden has issued a series of reprimands against Israel, accusing it of killing too many Palestinian civilians and destroying too much civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. expressed concern that this is the case.
But Mr. Biden and his administration have not elaborated publicly on what that means, a careful balancing act with close allies whom Mr. Biden has always supported.
Kahn is very clear about his interpretation. He said Israel chose criminal means to achieve its war aims in Gaza: “intentionally inflicting death, starvation, great suffering and severe injury on civilians.”
The ICC panel of judges will now consider whether to issue an arrest warrant. Countries that have signed the ICC's Rome Statute will be obligated to detain the men if given the opportunity.
The 124 signatories do not include Russia, China, or the United States. Israel has not signed either.
However, the ICC ruled that because the Palestinians were signatories, it had legal authority to prosecute crimes committed during the war.
If an arrest warrant is issued, it would mean Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, would no longer be able to visit the close Western ally without risking arrest.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the ICC's actions “did nothing to pause the fighting, rescue hostages or provide humanitarian assistance”. But if a warrant is issued, Britain will have to arrest Netanyahu unless it can successfully argue that he has diplomatic immunity.
A crucial exception for Netanyahu and Gallant is the United States. The White House believes the ICC has no jurisdiction in the conflict, a position that could widen a rift within Joe Biden's Democratic Party over the war.
Progressives have already welcomed the ICC's action. Israel's staunch allies among Democrats could support Republican efforts to pass legislation that would impose sanctions on ICC officials and ban them from entering the United States.
A few weeks ago, as rumors of impending indictments were flying around Europe, the United States and the Middle East, a group of Republican senators issued threats similar to those heard in the film against Mr. Khan and his staff.
“If you target Israel, we will target you… You have been warned.”
Yoav Gallant will also not be able to travel freely. The words he used when announcing Israel's siege of Gaza are frequently cited by critics of Israel's actions.
Two days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Gallant said: “I have ordered a complete siege of the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything will be shut down… We are fighting humans and animals and we will…” act accordingly.
“Israel deliberately and systematically deprived civilians throughout the Gaza Strip of items essential to human survival,” Khan said in a statement.
He said hunger existed in some parts of Gaza and was imminent in other areas.
Israel denies the existence of famine, insisting that food shortages are caused by Hamas theft and UN incompetence, not Israel's siege.
If the arrest warrant for Hamas political branch chief Ismail Haniyeh is approved, he will have to think more seriously about his regular trips to meet with senior Arab leaders. He is expected to spend more time in Qatar, which, like Israel, is not a signatory to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.
Two other accused Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, are believed to be hiding somewhere in Gaza. Arrest warrants do not increase pressure on them much. Israel has been trying to kill them for the past seven months.
The warrant names Netanyahu among the leaders of a group of suspects that also include Russian President Vladmir Putin and Libya's late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
President Putin is facing an arrest warrant for the illegal deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia.
Before Gaddafi was killed by his own people, the warrant for his arrest was for murder and persecution of unarmed civilians.
The company is not attractive to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of a country that prides itself on democracy.
