Israel responds to ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu

Senior Israeli officials have attacked the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, accusing The Hague-based institution of anti-Semitism and siding with terrorists. 

On Thursday, the ICC accused the pair of “crimes against humanity” allegedly committed during Israel’s war with the Palestinian armed group Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has called the decision “outrageous,” and claimed that “it makes a mockery of the sacrifice of all those who fight for justice – from the Allied victory over the Nazis till today.”

The ICC “has chosen the side of terror and evil over democracy and freedom, and turned the very system of justice into a human shield for Hamas’ crimes against humanity,” Herzog wrote on X.

Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir argued that The Hague-based institution had “once again shown that it is anti-Semitic through and through.”

“The answer to the arrest warrants is applying sovereignty over all the territories of Judea and Samaria and settlement in all parts of the country and severing ties with the terrorist [Palestinian] authority, along with sanctions,” Ben Gvir wrote in a post on X.

Settlements and National Projects Minister Orit Strock went as far as labeling the ICC “the successor of the court of Sodom,” a Biblical city, which – together with Gomorrah – was destroyed by God for its wickedness. “I expect the nations of the free world to withdraw from it in disgust, before they are stained with this terrible stain,” Strock stated.

The speaker of the Israeli parliament, Amir Ohana, argued that the only crimes against humanity during the conflict had been committed by Hamas.

“The ICC has chosen to politicize its mandate, turning itself into a tool of terrorists and those who seek to delegitimize Israel’s right to exist and defend its citizens from genocidal terror,” Ohana said, as quoted by the Times of Israel newspaper.

On the same day, the court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military commander Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, or ‘Deif’, for allegedly committing war crimes. Israel claimed to have killed him in an airstrike earlier this year.

Israel began its military operation in Gaza in response to a cross-border incursion by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in which around 1,200 people died and 250 others were taken hostage. At least 101 of these have yet to be returned. More than 44,056 Palestinians have been killed and over 104,000 wounded in Israeli attacks on the enclave, according to the latest data from Gaza’s health ministry.

The UN figures suggest that at least 1.9 million Palestinians in Gaza – around 90% of the population – have been internally displaced due to the fighting, with many having to move multiple times. 

Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC. However, the two Israeli politicians could face arrest in any of 124 countries that recognize the court’s authority.