An International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has filed arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Kahn announced that his office collected evidence that provides reasonable belief that Hamas head Yahya Sinwar, Hamas Commander-in-Chief Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and Hamas Political Bureau head Ismail Haniyeh “bear criminal responsibility” for various war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Kahn wrote that Hamas leaders have violated policies regarding extermination, murder, taking hostages, rape, torture, and other crimes against humanity.
“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,” the declaration said. “Some of these crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day.”
Kahn also filed arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
According to the prosecutor, Israel starved civilians, caused “great suffering,” and intentionally directed attacks against civilians.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz criticized Kahn’s announcement.
“The outrageous decision by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague is an unrestrained frontal assault on the victims of October 7th and our 128 hostages in Gaza,” he wrote on social media. “While Hamas murderers and rapists commit crimes against humanity against our brothers and sisters, the Prosecutor mentions in the same breath the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel alongside the vile Nazi-like monsters of Hamas – a historical disgrace that will be remembered forever.”
“No power in the world will prevent us from bringing back all our hostages and toppling the Hamas terror regime,” he added.
Other leaders condemned the move.
Israeli politician Danny Danon said the ICC “does not deserve the title of a legitimate judicial body.”
“A court that equates the leaders of a democratic nation, such as a prime minister and a defense minister, with those of a terrorist organization responsible for a sadistic massacre, where they butchered, tortured and raped of thousands of innocent citizens, does not deserve the title of a legitimate judicial body,” Danon wrote on X. “This is a puppet theater, manipulated by the directives of terrorists. I expect genuine democracies to condemn this blatantly antisemitic ruling.”
Netanyahu called the arrest warrant a “moral outrage.”
Hamas also issued a statement in response to the matter.
“The Hamas movement strongly denounces the attempts of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to equate the victim with the executioner by issuing arrest warrants against a number of Palestinian resistance leaders, without a legal basis, in violation of the international conventions and resolutions that gave the Palestinian people and all the peoples of the world under occupation the right to resist the occupation in all forms. Including armed resistance, especially the United Nations Charter, as stipulated in Article 51,” it said.
Republican Senators previously issued a warning to the ICC, saying the arrest warrants would “expose” the organization’s “hypocrisy and double standards.”
“By issuing warrants, you would be calling into question the legitimacy of Israel’s laws, legal system, and democratic form of government,” they wrote.
