ICC prosecutor seeks warrants against Israeli leaders, Sinwar ‘with utmost urgency’
Karim Khan says warrants needed due to ‘ongoing criminality,’ ‘worsening situation in Palestine;’ Netanyahu slams move as ‘moral disgrace of the first order’
Jeremy Sharon is The Times of Israel’s legal affairs and settlements reporter
International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan has called on Pre-Trial Chamber I of the court to issue the arrest warrants he requested in May for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif and “with utmost urgency.”
Writing in a submission filed on Monday, Khan said the warrants were needed due to the “ongoing criminality” he alleged in his initial request, and to what he said was the “worsening situation in Palestine.”
Netanyahu slammed the call, saying it was a “moral disgrace of the first order.”
“The comparison made by the prosecutor in The Hague between the prime minister and the defense minister of Israel, which fights the murderous terrorism of Hamas according to the laws of war; and the war criminal Sinwar, who executes Israeli hostages in cold blood; is antisemitism for its own sake and moral disgrace of the first order,” says a statement from Netanyahu’s office.
“Unfortunately, we saw from the beginning that the processes in The Hague are politically biased and do not rest on any professional legal basis,” the PMO said.
Khan requested arrest warrants against the Israeli and Hamas leaders in May on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes for the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas, and Israel’s military policies in its subsequent war against the terror group.
But in July, the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I allowed other parties to submit amicus briefs on the case, including whether or not the ICC has jurisdiction over Israeli nationals.
Dozens of briefs were filed, followed by Khan’s response, and the Pre-Trial Chamber is now in the process of reviewing those briefs and possibly examining the claims against its jurisdiction, a process which has delayed the court’s decision making process over Khan’s request for the warrants.
“The prosecution respectfully requests that the Chamber issue its decision on the applications for the warrants of arrest against Yahya Sinwar, [Mohammed] Deif, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Yoav Gallant with utmost urgency,” wrote Khan in his request on Monday.
Their arrest, Khan insisted, was necessary to ensure that the targets of the warrants “do not obstruct or endanger the investigation or court proceedings, prevent the continuing commission of the crimes alleged and/or the commission of other Rome Statute crimes.”
The prosecutor’s comments were made as part of his request to have the arrest warrant against former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh withdrawn following his assassination in Tehran in July, which he said rendered the request moot.
Khan said he was not yet withdrawing his request for an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, another senior Hamas leader who Israel said it assassinated in July, saying that the prosecution was still gathering information about “his reported death.”
Dozens of countries, academics and rights groups filed amicus briefs in July and August over Khan’s decision to seek arrest warrants against the Israeli and Hamas leaders.
The jurisdiction concern relates to claims by Israel, as well as the US and others, that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over Israeli nationals since the terms of the Oslo Accords signed between Israel and the PLO state explicitly that Palestinian authorities will not have criminal jurisdiction over Israeli citizens.
Since the ICC works under the principle that its member states delegate their ability to exercise criminal jurisdiction to the court, Israel and its allies claim that the Palestinians never had jurisdiction in the first place to confer on the ICC.
Additionally, in 2021 — when the ICC ruled that the court did have jurisdiction over any alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza despite the “State of Palestine” not being a sovereign state — it stated that it would rule at a later date on the jurisdiction problems raised by the Oslo Accords.
Lazar Berman contributed to this report.
