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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) is seeking arrest warrants for both the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar for their actions in the war raging in Gaza.
Karim Khan, the ICC's chief prosecutor, shared the news with CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour on Monday
Anne Herzberg, legal advisor of the pro-Israeli NGO Monitor, condemned the decision to pursue Israeli officials as "abhorrent."
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"While it is unlikely any Israeli would ever appear before this kangaroo court, this case represents yet again the exploitation of international institutions in service of malevolent agendas," Herzberg said in a statement to Newsweek.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the nonprofit Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), told Newsweek in a statement, "The arrest warrants for Israeli and Palestinian officials is a milestone in accountability in the face of decades of impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestine."
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Khan said that the court was also seeking warrants for Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as two other top Hamas leaders—Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the leader of the Al-Qassam Brigades, better known as Mohammed Deif, as well as Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' political leader.
The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant were laid out as "causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict."
An ICC panel will now consider Khan's application for the arrest warrants in a decision likely to take two months to consider, the Associated Press reported.
This is the first time the ICC has targeted the leader of a U.S. ally, putting Netanyahu in the company of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant connected to his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "Don't expect other countries to submit to ICC warrants if the U.S. does not," added Whitson from DAWN, which called for the immediate suspension of all U.S. arms transfers to Israel.
Israel is not a member of the ICC and even if the arrest warrants were issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face an immediate risk of prosecution. But the move is likely to isolate Israel's war cabinet under fire for its offensive in Gaza, which has killed over 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Israel's actions followed the Hamas attacks on southern Israel on October 7 that killed at least 1,200 people, and at least 245 were taken hostage.
In a statement posted on the ICC website, Khan said: "Israel, like all states, has a right to take action to defend its population. That right, however, does not absolve Israel or any state of its obligation to comply with international humanitarian law."
"We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population," he added in the statement.
Khan said that since last year, he had consistently said that under international humanitarian law, Israel needed to take urgent action to allow access to aid in Gaza. Benny Gantz, a member of Israel's war cabinet with Netanyahu and Gallant, called Khan's push for arrest warrants "in itself a crime of historic proportion to be remembered for generations."
Meanwhile, the charges against Sinwar, and other Hamas leaders, include "extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention."
Khan said his office believes there are reasonable grounds to believe Hamas leaders are "criminally responsible" for the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas, in particular its military wing the Al-Qassam Brigades and other armed groups on 7 October in which at least 245 hostages were taken.
He said during his visits to kibbutzim and the Supernova music festival site where the Hamas attacks took place, "I saw the devastating scenes of these attacks and the profound impact of the unconscionable crimes charged in the applications filed today."
Update 05/20/24, 8:06 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
Update 05/20/24, 12:05 p.m. ET: This article was further updated with comment from Sarah Leah Whitson.
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