ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has angrily condemned the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor for seeking arrest warrants for him alongside Hamas’s leaders over alleged war crimes in the Gaza conflict.
Mr Netanyahu said he rejected with disgust that “democratic Israel” had been compared with what he called “mass murderers”.
Mr Netanyahu’s comments have been echoed by US President Joe Biden, who said there was no equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
The chief ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant bore criminal responsibility for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel and the US, its key ally, are not members of the ICC, which was set up in 2002.
The accusations against the Israeli stem from the events of 7 October, when waves of Hamas gunmen attacked Israel, the attack triggered the current war, in which at least 35,500 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed the president’s condemnation, saying Washington “fundamentally rejects” the move. “It is shameful,” he said. “[The] ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter.”
Mr Blinken also suggested the request for arrest warrants would jeopardise ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire deal.
He said Israel’s prime minister and defence minister were suspected of crimes including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, murder, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, and extermination.
The ICC defended its stance on Monday, saying that despite “significant efforts” it had not received “any information that has demonstrated genuine action at the domestic level [in Israel] to address the crimes alleged or the individuals under investigation”.
A panel of judges at the ICC must now consider whether to issue the warrants and, if they do, countries signed up to the ICC statute are obliged to arrest the men if they have such an opportunity.
