Israel files ICC petition challenging potential arrest warrants against PM, Gallant
Jerusalem says it rejects court’s jurisdiction in matter, asserts Israel has independent judiciary but wasn’t given chance to probe war crimes claims itself before prosecutor acted
The Foreign Ministry said Friday that Israel has filed an official petition to the International Criminal Court, challenging potential arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and asserting that Israel has a robust and independent legal system able to self-investigate such claims.
Earlier this month, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan called on the court to issue arrest warrants he requested in May for Netanyahu, Gallant and leaders of the Hamas terror group “with utmost urgency.”
Khan requested the warrants in charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes for the October 7 atrocities committed by Hamas, and Israel’s military policies in the subsequent Gaza war against the terror group.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it is questioning the court’s jurisdiction in the matter, asserting that Khan contravened the rules of the court and failed to offer Israel the opportunity to investigate the claims itself.
“There is no other democracy with an independent and well-regarded justice system such as Israel that has faced such discriminatory treatment by the prosecutor,” ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein said.
“Israel remains committed to the rule of law and to justice and will continue to defend its citizens from the ongoing attacks and atrocities of Hamas as well as Iran’s other terrorist arms, in accordance with international law,” Marmorstein said.
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.
Over 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. The figure has not been verified, but Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and that the ratio of civilians to combatants has been roughly one-to-one. Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has 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” with a state commission of inquiry, the establishment of which has been rejected by Netanyahu.
Earlier this month, it was reported that Justice Minister Yariv Levin, acting at the behest of Netanyahu, asked Baharav-Miara to open a criminal probe into the premier and Gallant regarding the Gaza war in an effort to circumvent the request for arrest warrants.
Channel 12 news said Netanyahu wanted the probe to be opened and then closed, with an update filed to the ICC that the charges had been investigated by Israel and therefore do not require the court’s intervention.
According to the report, Baharav-Miara rejected the request on the grounds that it was a blatant ploy that would not satisfy the ICC. Baharav-Miara also reportedly noted she has already publicly declared that only a state commission of inquiry — Israel’s highest level probe — into the Hamas-led October 7 attack and the ensuing war in Gaza would suffice.
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.
Also this month, Channel 12 reported that Baharav-Miara had warned Netanyahu that the window of opportunity to establish a state commission of inquiry to protect Israelis from action by international entities, was closing.
Khan also sought arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Muhammad Deif, Ismail Haniyeh, and Yahya 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 July by an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Israel. Haniyeh, then the terror group’s political leader, was assassinated in Tehran later that month in a blast that Hamas and Iran have blamed Israel for, though Israel has not officially commented.
Sinwar, an architect of the October 7 attack, has since been named as Haniyeh’s successor.
Khan has asked for the arrest warrant against Haniyeh to be withdrawn, saying his death rendered the request moot. He did not make a similar request in Deif’s case, saying that the prosecution was still gathering information about “his reported death.”
