Report: AG tells Netanyahu to set up state inquiry immediately, as best way to stop arrest warrants against senior officials

Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara issues a harsh warning to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a state commission of inquiry is the best way to stop arrest warrants from being issued against senior Israeli civilian and military officials, Channel 12 news reports.

“There is an extraordinary amount of topics of inquiry and severe dangers in the international relations sphere,” she writes in an official letter to Netanyahu and a small number of senior Israeli officials cited in the TV report.

She says that Israel’s defense of complementarity — the principle that international courts like those 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.”

Baharav-Miara warns that government commissions of inquiry are inadequate and 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.”

“The international window is closing,” she warns. “A state commission of inquiry should be established immediately.”

Channel 12 also reports that IDF officers are concerned that arrest warrants will be issued against them if a commission of inquiry is not established.