Netanyahu said to ask AG to probe him and Gallant in bid to avert ICC arrest warrant
Report says that at PM’s behest, justice minister urged AG to open investigation into the premier and defense minister and then close it, which she argued court would see as a ploy
Justice Minister Yariv Levin, acting at the behest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asked Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara to open a criminal probe into the premier and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant regarding the Gaza war in an effort to circumvent a pending request for the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for the pair, according to an Israeli television report Wednesday.
Channel 12 news said Netanyahu wanted a probe into the ongoing war and how the military campaign against Hamas has been handled 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 and 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, 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.
The unsourced Channel 12 news report said Netanyahu fears a state commission of inquiry would just be a legal ploy to try to remove him from office. Netanyahu has long made a similar claim about the corruption charges for which he is on trial.
Gallant, who like Baharav-Miara prefers a state commission, nonetheless asked the attorney general to at least back a government inquiry, the network said. Baharav-Miara was said to reject the idea, saying it would likely do more harm than good to Israel’s image at the ICC as “the investigated cannot appoint the investigator.”
The request from Levin, a top Likud party ally of Netanyahu’s, came after ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan this week urged the court to issue the arrest warrants he requested in May against the prime minister, Gallant and several top Hamas figures “with utmost urgency.”
Khan requested the arrest 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 war against the terror group.
Over the weekend, Channel 12 reported that Baharav-Miara had warned Netanyahu that a state commission of inquiry was the best way to prevent international warrants from being issued against senior Israeli civilian and military officials.
In a letter, she cautioned that the window of opportunity to establish a commission before international entities take action was closing, the network said.
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” with a state commission of inquiry.
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.
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 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.”
