Yehuda Cohen, the father of Israeli-American hostage Nimrod Cohen, met with the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Tuesday, to discuss using the arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to pressure him into implementing the hostage-ceasefire agreement with Hamas in full.
During the meeting, according to the Kan public broadcaster, Cohen asked Karim Khan to work with the Israeli government to reach a permanent end to the war in Gaza, and to ensure that the ceasefire agreement is not cut short before all the remaining hostages are released.
Nimrod Cohen, an IDF soldier then aged 19, was abducted from the Nahal Oz military outpost during the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror assault in southern Israel. He is expected to be released during the second phase of the deal, the first phase of which began on Sunday and will last for 42 days.
Cohen was said to have asked Khan to use the arrest warrant for Netanyahu, issued in November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza war, as a way of pressuring the prime minister into seeing out the duration of the agreement with Hamas. The exact way in which Cohen hoped to see the warrant used as leverage by The Hague was unclear.
In addition, Cohen was said to have raised the issue of the Israeli government’s refusal to open a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 attacks and ensuing war in Gaza, as well as recent attempts by the government to revive its contentious judicial overhaul agenda, which has largely remained stagnant since the Hamas onslaught.
After Khan requested arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his then-defense minister Yoav Gallant last July, Israel was reportedly advised that establishing a commission of inquiry could have prevented them from being issued.
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan (center) announces that he has requested arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, May 20, 2024. (Courtesy, International Criminal Court)
State commissions of inquiry are typically headed by a retired Supreme Court justice, appointed by the court president. As such, they are seen by international agencies as an indication of an independent justice system able to probe allegations against a country, circumventing the need for external intervention.
As with the refusal to open a commission of inquiry, critics of the judicial overhaul legislation have long warned that weakening Israel’s legal system could expose senior IDF commanders and political figures to criminal proceedings in international courts, such as the ICC, if Israel is believed to no longer have the ability to investigate itself.
In a recent interview with Reuters, Khan said that he believed Israel had made “no real effort” to investigate the allegations of war crimes itself, and stood by his decision to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
“We’re here as a court of last resort and …as we speak right now, we haven’t seen any real effort by the State of Israel to take action that would meet the established jurisprudence, which are investigations regarding the same suspects for the same conduct,” he said.
Should Israel investigate itself, however, he said the case could still be handed back to the internal courts under so-called complementary principles.
Cohen’s meeting with Khan followed a stormy session of the Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee last week, in which Cohen told the forum he would be willing to go to the ICC and say that Netanyahu was responsible for “war crimes” against not only Palestinians but also Israelis.
He noted that 400 IDF soldiers have been killed fighting in Gaza, and said: “If these [ICC] arrest warrants can make Netanyahu abandon his personal interests and make a deal including the very last hostage, then that is what I will do.”
Yehuda Cohen, father of hostage Nimrod Cohen, speaks during a meeting of the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee at the Knesset in Jerusalem, January 13, 2025. (Knesset)
In response, Likud MK Eliyahu Revivo charged that his “contemptible” statement was “condemning your son to the Hamas dungeons for many more years.”
It is believed that 91 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Three hostages were released earlier this week at the start of the three-phase hostage-ceasefire agreement. The terror group also released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014.
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