In a massive legal bombshell, the International Criminal Court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant over the war in Gaza, an unprecedented step that put the two at risk of being detained in much of the world.
The three judges of the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber I issued the warrants unanimously on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes, which the court’s top prosecutor Karim Khan alleges were committed during the ongoing war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.
The decision marked the first time the ICC has ever issued arrest warrants against leaders of a democratic country.
Both Netanyahu and Gallant will be liable for arrest if they travel to any of the more than 120 countries that are party to the ICC.
The court also issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed by an IDF strike in Gaza in July. Khan had sought arrest warrants for Deif and slain Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar for the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
Turning Netanyahu and Gallant, who was dismissed from his post as defense minister earlier this month, into internationally wanted suspects will likely further isolate them and complicate efforts to negotiate a ceasefire to end the 13-month conflict. But its practical implications could be limited since Israel and the United States are not party to the court, and the warrant has no enforcement mechanism.
Karim Khan, center, prosecutor of International Criminal Court, greets members of delegations as he arrives for a Security Council meeting, July 13, 2023, at United Nations headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)
The ICC said Israel’s acceptance of the court’s jurisdiction was not required.
The Prime Minister’s Office declared in a statement on Thursday that the ICC’s “antisemitic decision” to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant “is equivalent to a modern Dreyfus trial.”
Pledging that the court’s decision would not deter Israel from protecting its citizens, the PMO said it rejected “with disgust” the court’s “false” charges — and asserts that they stem from Khan’s efforts to “save his skin from the serious charges against him for sexual harassment” as well as the beliefs of “biased judges motivated by antisemitic hatred of Israel.”
“That is why the prosecutor lied when he told American senators that he would not act against Israel before he got here and heard its side. That is why he suddenly canceled his arrival in Israel last May, a few days after suspicions were raised against him for sexual harassment, and announced his intention to issue arrest warrants against the prime minister and former defense minister,” the PMO charged.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ahead of his address on the opening day of the winter session at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on October 28, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/ Flash90)
Earlier this month, the ICC announced that it would launch an external probe into sexual misconduct accusations against Kahn.
Khan has categorically denied the accusations that he tried to coerce a female aide into a sexual relationship, and the decision to launch an external probe came as the court has come under pressure from US senators to not issue warrants over the Gaza war until the misconduct claims have been investigated.
US President Joe Biden has also blasted the ICC prosecutor for requesting the warrants and expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. This week, incoming Senate majority leader John Thune threatened to push sanctions against the court if it issued the warrants.
Khan sought the warrants on charges that Israel has targeted civilians in Gaza and used starvation as a method of war.
“The Chamber considered that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both individuals intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity,” the three-judge panel wrote in its unanimous decision to issue warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.
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.
Palestinians are seen storming trucks loaded with humanitarian aid brought in through a new US-built pier, in the central Gaza Strip, on May 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, File)
The government issued harsh condemnations of the ICC on Thursday, accusing it of antisemitism in the wake of its decision to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
The court has “once against shown that it is antisemitic through and through,” declared National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, while Transportation Minister Miri Regev, called the warrants “a legal absurdity.”
Negev, Galilee and National Resilience Minister Yitzhak Wasserlauf characterized the warrants as “antisemitic accusations against all citizens of Israel” — pledging that Jerusalem would “not be deterred and will continue to fight murderous terrorism.”
“Simply antisemitism, always antisemitism,” said Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, citing the verse from the Book of Numbers which states that the Jews are “a people that dwells alone, not reckoned among the nations.”
President Isaac Herzog said that the ICC decision marked “a dark day for justice [and] humanity.”
By issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, the ICC has “chosen the side of terror and evil over democracy and freedom, and turned the very system of justice into a human shield for Hamas’ crimes against humanity,” Herzog charged — calling for “true moral clarity in the face of an Iranian empire of evil that seeks to destabilize our region and the world.”
Illustrative: Israeli soldiers and journalists seen around the destruction caused by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, November 2, 2023. (Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)
The court dismissed warrants against Sinwar and Haniyeh, who have both been killed since Khan made the request. But it pushed ahead with the measure against Deif, apparently unconvinced that the shadowy head of Hamas’s armed wing was truly dead.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
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.
A member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) checks the courtyard of a school after an Israeli airstrike hit the site where Hamas had set up a command center, in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on September 11, 2024 (Eyad Baba/AFP)
The Foreign Ministry said in September that it had submitted two legal briefs challenging the ICC’s jurisdiction by asserting that Israel has a robust and independent legal system that is able to self-investigate such claims.
Israel argued that the court did not provide Jerusalem the opportunity to investigate the allegations itself before requesting the warrants.
“No other democracy with an independent and respected legal system like that which exists in Israel has been treated in this prejudicial manner by the Prosecutor,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein wrote on X at the time. He said Israel remained “steadfast in its commitment to the rule of law and justice” and would continue to protect its citizens against militancy.
Despite the warrants, none of the suspects is likely to face judges in The Hague any time soon. The court itself has no police to enforce warrants, instead relying on cooperation from its member states.
Attorney Yuval Kaplinsky, a former head of the International Law Department at the State Attorney’s Office, said the warrants mean that if either Netanyahu or Gallant go to any of the countries that are party to the ICC, “there is a chance that they will be arrested and extradited [for trial in The Hague]. I assume they will act with caution, and avoid finding themselves in such a situation.”
Speaking to Channel 12, Kaplinsky said that if the prime minister, for instance, wants to visit an ICC-party country such as the UK or Belgium, to speak to the Jewish community and “shout that the world is antisemitic,” they likely won’t give him assurances that he would not be arrested.
“But if he was coming for a summit with moderate Arab states, in order to forge an international coalition to improve the situation in the Middle East, there is a chance that he might [get such assurances].”
He noted that the prime minister can continue to fly directly to the US, “because there, there is no problem.”
Times of Israel staff and Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
