The International Criminal Court announced Thursday that it had issued arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, a former Israeli defense minister. The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were originally requested in late May by Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor.
The warrant was issued by a three-judge panel, which agreed with Khan’s assertion that Israel had deprived civilians of basic necessities as a means of waging war. The judges wrote,
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.
Netanyahu’s office issued a statement in response to the warrant, calling the ICC’s decision “an antisemitic decision” and “equivalent to a modern Dreyfus trial.” Israel’s left-wing President Isaac Herzog, usually at odds with Netanyahu, also criticized the decision, calling it “a dark day for justice [and] humanity.”
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The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for the senior Hamas commander Mohammad Deif, whom the IDF claims to have killed in a strike in July.
Originally, Khan had also requested arrest warrants for two other Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar. These warrants were not granted, as Sinwar was killed in Gaza in October and Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in July.
It is unlikely that the arrest warrants for either Netanyahu or Gallant will be carried out, as Israel, along with Russia, China, and the United States, is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. Nevertheless, Josep Borrell, the top diplomat of the European Union, stated that the ICC’s decision “has to be respected and implemented.”
