The International Criminal Court (‘ICC’) issued arrest warrants Thursday for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, over alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The ICC said in a statement on Thursday that they’ve accused Netanyahu and Gallant of a string of human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip, with judges determining that there were “reasonable grounds to believe that” both Netanyahu and Gallant “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity, from at least 8 October 2023 to 20 May 2024. This finding is based on the role of Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant in impeding humanitarian aid in violation of international humanitarian law and their failure to facilitate relief by all means at its disposal”
Netanyahu’s office branded the decision “antisemitic,” ad rejected the charges as “absurd and false” and condemning the ICC as a “biased and discriminatory political body.” Both Israel and the United States do not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC, which has no police to enforce its warrants.
The court issued a separate arrest warrant for Deif, an alleged architect of the Oct. 7 terror attack, whom Israel said it killed earlier this year. Deif was accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including for his role in the Oct. 7 attack in which Israeli officials said some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 taken hostage. While Hamas welcomed the warrants as an “important step towards justice”, senior political official Basem Naim said “the court’s decision remains limited and symbolic if it is not supported by all means by all countries around the world to implement it.”
A spokesperson for the National Security Council said the U.S. “fundamentally rejects the Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials.. we are deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision.”
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