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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Friday called on judges to “urgently” rule on his request for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others linked to the Israel-Hamas war, saying the court has jurisdiction.
“It is settled law that the court has jurisdiction over the matter,” prosecutor Karim Khan wrote in a 49-page legal brief.
Khan called on the ICC’s panel of pretrial judges to “urgently decide” on his application in May for arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three Hamas leaders, two of whom have now been killed.
The brief, filed by Khan, was in response to legal arguments filed by dozens of countries, academics, victims’ groups and rights organizations that either rejected or supported the ICC’s authority to issue arrest warrants in its investigations into the Gaza war and the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
In an arrest warrant application filed in May, Khan accused Netanyahu, Galant and three Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammad Dave and Ismail Haniyeh — of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Haniyeh and Dave were later killed. Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attack and Hamas’s top official in Gaza, was subsequently appointed as the group’s new leader.
Netanyahu called the prosecutor’s charges against him a “disgrace” and an attack on the Israeli army and Israel as a whole. He vowed to press ahead with Israel’s war against Hamas. Hamas also condemned Khan’s actions, saying that calling for the arrest of its leader was tantamount to “equating victims with executioners.”
Israel is not a member of the ICJ, so Netanyahu and Galant would not face any immediate risk of prosecution even if warrants were issued. But the threat of arrest could make it difficult for Israeli leaders to travel abroad.
The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas and other militants attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping about 250. About 110 hostages remain in Gaza, a third of whom are believed dead. Israel’s offensive in response has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the local health ministry, which did not say how many were militants or civilians.
Much of the legal debate before ICC judges in recent weeks has focused on the question of whether the ICC’s power to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders is overridden by the terms of the 1993 Oslo Accords peace deal. As part of the agreement, the Palestinians agreed that they would have no criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals.
Khan insisted that the suggestion that the agreement could invalidate the court’s jurisdiction was “baseless”.
He called the legal argument “inconsistent with the proper interpretation and application of the provisions of the Court’s founding Rome Statute” and “a misunderstanding of fundamental concepts of jurisdiction under international law, including the law of occupation, and the relationship between those concepts and the interpretation and application of the Statute.”
It is unclear when the judge will rule on Khan’s request for an arrest warrant.
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