ICC Prosecutor requests arrest warrants for Israeli, Hamas officials

Left to right: Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Yahya Sinwar, Ismail haniyeh. No high-quality photos of Deif are available, as he is very secretive.

By "Rain"

Written May 31, 2024

Disclaimer: The author of this article have chosen to use an alias

On Monday, may 20th of 2024, A prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, a United Nations body that prosecutes individuals and leaders accused of war crimes & crimes against humanity, issued a recommendation that stunned the world. Chief ICC prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan issued an application for an arrest warrant against 3 Hamas and 2 Israeli leaders in response to possible war crimes & crimes against humanity committed during the October 7th Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, the densely populated palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas, saying there are “reasonable grounds to believe” the 5 leaders committed war crimes.

The application for an arrest warrant means that the ICC judges must review it and improve it before it can become ICC mandate, meaning countries that host any of the 5 leaders and are ICC members would be obliged (but not forced) to comply and arrest the individuals for later trial.

The 3 Hamas leaders in question are Yahya Sinwar, leader of Hamas, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, or Deif, head of Hamas’s armed wing, the Al-Qassam brigades, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau. The 3 are believed to be implicated in the planning and execution of the 2023 October 7th attack against Israel, where Hamas and various other militants active in the Gaza strip killed almost 1200 Israelis in brutal fashion, taking hundreds of hostages, several dozen of which remain. The prosecutor concluded this after reviewing photo, video, and written evidence pointing to Hamas’s Al-Qassem brigades committing the war crimes of extermination, murder, rape, torture, taking hostages, and general cruelty against Israeli civilians, military, and hostages. The prosecutor gave his condolences to the affected Israelis and their families, and reiterated a call to release the hostages.

The Israeli leaders, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, Israel’s prime minister and defense minister respectively, are believed to be implicated in the response to the Hamas attack, which as of may 21st, 2024, has according to the Gaza ministry of health and UN-affiliated groups, killed 35000 Palestinians, destroyed Gaza’s hospitals,schools, housing, and other infrastructure, and limited the access of food, water, and fuel vital to the continued survival of Gaza’s 2 million people, causing a famine. The death toll of 35000 is disputed, with the death toll being hard to verify for both Gazan authorities and 3rd parties. 25,000 of the bodies have been fully identified and 10000 remain unidentified according to the UN, with a majority of the killed being women and children. The Gazan authorities do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in the toll, with estimates from Israel and Hamas ranging from 6,000-15,000, with an unknown number part of the official death toll. The 2 are believed to be systemically responsible for using starvation of civilians as a method of war, willfully causing extreme suffering to the minds and bodies of Gazans, willful killing and murder as a war crime, intentionally targeting civilian targets, extermination/murder in the context of starvation deaths as a crime against humanity, and persecution and inhumane acts (I.E. torture) against Palestinian groups as a crime against humanity.

The Prosecutor alleges that these events continue up to the present date and beyond. The evidence was collected from eyewitnesses, video, photo, and satellite evidence, along with the Israeli government’s statements and other data on the invasion of Gaza. The prosecutor also said that Israel does have a right to defend itself, but that the means that Israel has chosen to go about it, using collective punishment of civilians as an example, constitute crimes against humanity, saying that no country, group or person could act against international humanitarian law without facing consequences no matter the offending entity’s reason. The ICC prosecutor claimed to be nonpartisan and said he was also advised by a team of experienced and well-regarded legal experts.

It should be noted that Israel, along with the US, are not members of the ICC, and reject its authority. However legally, Palestine, with its UN observer state status, does recognize the ICC, and so crimes committed in Gaza & the West Bank or by Palestinian entities in any country may be investigated.

Israel and its allies in the international community  responded harshly to this. Netanyahu accused Khan of “Fueling the fires of antisemitism” and likened him to the anti-jewish judges of Nazi Germany, saying there was “no equivalence” between Israel and Hamas’s actions and leaders, a call reiterated by US president Joe Biden. In the ICC statement, no equivalence was explicitly drawn between either of the 2 sides. The US also said it would put personal sanctions and US travel bans on Khan and the ICC, and would pressure its European allies, mostly signatories of the ICC, to not comply with the arrest warrant, and possibly exert diplomatic pressure on the ICC. Hamas issued a short response to the arrest warrant, saying the ICC was “Persecuting the victim (Gaza) and not the executioner (Israel)” and denying the allegations of war crimes. Israel and its allies also denied the allegation that Israel committed war crimes.