AG tells Netanyahu state inquiry into war needed to prevent int’l arrests – report
Baharav-Miara said to stress only state commission into October 7 attack and Gaza war will satisfy international community that country is probing alleged crimes
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has warned Netanyahu that a state commission of inquiry into the events leading up to the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, and how the campaign has been handled, is the best way to prevent arrest warrants being issued against senior Israeli civilian and military officials, according to a Saturday report.
In what Channel 12 news characterized as a particularly stern missive, Baharav-Miara wrote, “There is an extraordinary amount of topics of inquiry and severe dangers in the international relations sphere.”
The letter was sent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a small number of senior Israeli officials and cautioned that the window of opportunity to establish a commission before international entities take action is closing, the report said.
The prime minister has so far refused to initiate a state commission of inquiry into the series of failures before and during October 7 — when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages, and starting the ongoing war — despite frequent calls to do so, including by some coalition members. While Netanyahu has said he prefers a government inquiry, Baharav-Miara has pushed for a state commission, arguing that it would have more independence and scope. Israel has faced accusations of war crimes in its military response to the attack and a probe would be expected to address those issues too.
In the letter, Baharav-Miara said that Israel’s defense of complementarity — the principle that bodies like the International Criminal Court in The Hague can only get involved when national legal systems fail to carry out their duties — “can only be realized through a state commission of inquiry.”
“The complete separation from the political echelon and the independence of the investigation committee is of crucial importance,” she stressed.
A government panel cannot be compared to a state commission of inquiry, which is “the appropriate mechanism for the purpose of the investigation,” she wrote.
“The international window is closing,” she warned. “A state commission of inquiry should be established immediately.”
Baharav-Miara further cautioned that failing to establish an independent state commission of inquiry “fundamentally contradicts the government’s responsibilities to the public, and would represent an extreme case that justifies judicial intervention [from abroad].”
The report said that IDF officers are concerned that arrest warrants will be issued against them if a commission of inquiry is not established.
Responding to the report, a spokesperson for the attorney general said, “We do not intend to refer to the opinion presented at the request of the political echelon and the internal government discourse.”
Last month Netanyahu met with judicial officials to discuss whether to set up a commission of inquiry into the October 7 attacks and the Gaza war as part of efforts to stave off looming arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes.
Netanyahu reportedly expressed his preference for the establishment of a lower-level governmental commission of inquiry or some other type of panel that would not be a state commission, the most independent type of panel capable of probing government conduct.
Opponents of the government and others in Israel have argued that only a state commission, which enjoys the broadest powers under the law, is the appropriate forum by which to exhaustively investigate all aspects of the worst single attack in the country’s history.
A governmental commission of inquiry is composed of members chosen by the executive branch and typically has less investigative powers than a state commission, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Court chief justice.
Last month, dozens of countries, academics, and rights groups filed legal arguments either rejecting or supporting the ICC’s power to issue arrest warrants in its investigation into the war between Israel and Hamas.
The submissions came as a panel of judges considers a request filed in May by the court’s chief prosecutor, Kharim Khan, for warrants against Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, only one of which, Yahya Sinwar, is still alive.
The warrants sought by Khan are on charges that Israel has targeted civilians in Gaza and used starvation as a method of war.
Israel strongly rejects the accusations, pointing to the relatively low civilian-to-combatant ratio among the casualties in Gaza and the terror group’s use of civilians as human shields, while highlighting its own efforts to expand humanitarian aid into the enclave, despite regular looting by gangs and terror groups.
Khan also sought arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Muhammad Deif, Ismail Haniyeh, and Sinwar, alleging crimes against humanity, including murder, hostage-taking, and torture, both during the war and in the October 7 onslaught.
Deif, then the commander of Hamas’s military wing, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip last month, according to Israel. Haniyeh, then the group’s political leader, was assassinated in Tehran in July, in a blast for which Israel has not claimed responsibility.
Sinwar, an architect of the October 7 attack, has since been named as Haniyeh’s successor.
In July, several groups representing survivors of the Hamas massacres and the families of those killed announced the formation of an independent probe into October 7 and the war.
