The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants Thursday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel’s war against Hamas militants in Gaza.
In a statement on its website, the ICC said the warrants charge each man with the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, along with crimes against humanity including murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.
The warrants cover acts committed from “at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest.”
Israel is not a member of the ICC, and Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution. But the threat of arrest could create issues if either man travels abroad.
Netanyahu condemned the ICC arrest warrant. A statement from his office Thursday said Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions.”
The court also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif for crimes against humanity, including murder, hostage taking and sexual violence. Those charges are drawn from Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel that killed some 1,200 people, including 46 U.S. citizens. Hamas also took roughly 250 hostages.
Following the attack, Israel began a campaign to eliminate Hamas in Gaza that has killed about 44,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count but says more than half of those killed were women and children.
When the original charges were brought to the court in May by ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan, Netanyahu issued a statement calling them “a moral outrage of historic proportions. It will cast an everlasting mark of shame on the international court.”
Netanyahu maintained that “Israel is waging a just war against Hamas,” and the “absurd” charges against him and Gallant “are merely an attempt to deny Israel the basic right of self-defense.”
Netanyahu fired Gallant earlier this month, saying the trust between the two men had evaporated over the course of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Hamas has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, Britain. and other Western countries.
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