ICC prosecutor Khan urges court to reject Israel's appeal against arrest warrants for PM Netanyahu, and former DM Gallant

Karim Khan, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, formally urged the court on Monday to maintain the arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

In his 55-page response, Khan called on the court to reject Israel’s objections concerning the arrest warrants.

The prosecutor justified his position by stating that the court has jurisdiction over all countries that are parties to the Rome Statute. While Israel and the United States do not accept the court’s jurisdiction, Khan argued that “Palestine” is a member state and the alleged Israeli “war crimes” took place in the Gaza Strip. 

In late November, Israeli leaders across the political spectrum have condemned the ICC’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant as a hostile act against Israel. 

Netanyahu blasted the court’s decision. 

“The court in The Hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation. This – when we have supplied Gaza with 700,000 tons of food to feed the people of Gaza. That’s 3,200 calories (per day) for every man, woman and child in Gaza… Yet, just in the last few weeks, Israel facilitated the vaccination of 97 percent of the people of Gaza against polio. This doesn’t prevent the court of accusing us of genocide,” the Israeli Prime Minister stated. 

“This is an anti-Semitic decision that has one goal: to deter me, to deter us, from exercising our natural right of self-defense against the enemies who rose up to destroy us,” Netanyahu continued. 

U.S. President Joe Biden also blasted the ICC’s arrest warrants against Israeli leaders and for creating a false moral equivalence between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas. 

“The ICC issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. Let me be clear once again: whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.  We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” Biden stated. 

In December, Israel formally appealed the ICC arrest warrants, arguing that the court had violated foundational principles including lack of jurisdiction. In its formal appeal, the State of Israel said that “instead of providing Israel with an article 18(1) notification that reflects the scope of the investigation by which Israel’s own accountability efforts would be judged, the Prosecutor abruptly announced arrest warrants against the Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, based on an investigation that took the same amount of time as was required by his Office to issue arrest warrants against Hamas’s murderous leadership."

The Prosecutor went on to add, "This reflected disregard for the fundamental principle of complementarity, and indifference to the existence of a functioning democracy with independent legal institutions committed to the rule of law.”

While Khan insists on maintaining the arrest warrants against Israeli leaders, he is himself faces charges of sexual misconduct. Human rights groups have called to suspend Khan during the probe due to potential conflict of interest. Khan has denied the allegations. However, due to the timing of the arrest warrants against Netanyahu, some pundits have suggested that Khan is seeking to divert attention from his own personal scandal.