The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor said Monday he would seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as well as for other senior Israeli and Palestinian figures who have played key roles in the ongoing war in Gaza.
Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan said in a statement that he was “filing applications for warrants of arrest before Pre-Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court in the Situation in the State of Palestine.”
While the court will likely have a difficult time prosecuting Israeli leaders, the arrest warrants could make it difficult for officials to travel abroad and a trial in the court could also be deeply embarrassing to the Israeli government.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also faces arrest, as pressure continues on Israel at home and abroad to halt its military offensive in Gaza and secure a cease-fire and hostage release deal with Hamas.
Khan said that both Netanyahu and Gallant bear criminal responsibility for a list of “war crimes,” including the starvation of civilians; “wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury;” wilful killing, and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.
“We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy. These crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day,” Khan wrote in the ICC statement, adding that his office has extensive evidence including video and interviews with survivors.
Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, commander-in-chief of the military wing of Hamas, and Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’ political bureau, both face having warrants issued for their arrest by the ICC for their part in the Oct. 7 attacks.
“We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel by Hamas and other armed groups pursuant to organisational policies. Some of these crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day,” Khan wrote.
Israel’s leadership had been working through diplomatic channels to prevent the issuance of warrants from the ICC, an Israeli official told NBC News in April.
“Seasoned observers” of the ICC had expected the court to issue warrants “against not only Israeli officials, but also against Hamas leaders,” Brian Finucane, an expert in international law, told NBC News in a phone interview on April 29, before the warrants were issued.
The ICC — based in The Hague, Netherlands — can charge individuals with war crimes and other related charges. It is separate from the International Court of Justice, which considers cases between states and is currently investigating whether Israel has committed acts of genocide in Gaza.
The ICC launched an investigation three years ago into possible war crimes committed by both Israel and Palestinian militants going back to the Israel-Hamas war in 2014.
At the time State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the U.S. had “serious concerns” about the probe, which was launched after the Palestinians, who joined the court in 2015, asked the ICC to look into Israeli actions during a 2014 war in the Gaza Strip, as well as the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem. The international community widely considers the settlements to be illegal under international law.
It is unclear when the ICC launched its probe into aspects of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which began after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the country left 1,200 dead and around 250 people taken hostage. Health officials in Gaza say more than 35,000 have died since then.
Khan visited the region in December and said that his investigation was “moving forward at pace, with rigor, with determination and with an insistence that we act not on emotion but on solid evidence.”
Finucane, who is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Reiss Center on Law and Security at NYU School of Law, noted that Israel, like the U.S., does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.
He said neither country was party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. But he added that the warrants would put Israel officials at risk of arrest in other countries, including much of Europe.
“As a practical matter, ICC arrest warrants could function as a travel ban,” said Finucane, who served as an attorney adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the State Department during both the Obama and Trump administrations. “Parties to the Rome Statute who become members of the International Criminal Court have obligations to act upon arrest warrants,” he added.
The warrants also put Netanyahu on similar footing on the international stage as Russian President Vladimir Putin, after the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him in March 2023, accusing him of being responsible for war crimes in Ukraine.
Finucane said that at the time, President Joe Biden “welcomed that announcement and said he thought it was justified.”
He added that he hoped that the ICC’s decision would “provide a further reason for the U.S. government to think long and hard about its continued unconditional military support for Israel.”
“This conflict in Gaza has been disastrous for not only the people of Israel, Palestine, but also the wider region,” he said.
