NPR
The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said Monday he will seek arrest warrants for top leaders from both Israel and Hamas.
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan has asked for warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and two other senior Hamas officials.
Khan has submitted an application with the ICC’s panel of judges to issue the warrants. He says Hamas’ attacks of last Oct. 7 and the ensuing violence since are the basis for these warrants he’s requesting from the court.
He said that an initial investigation by his prosecutorial team has indicated that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed, and continue to be committed, by both sides in the Gaza conflict.
The charges Netanyahu and Gallant could face for their role in Israel’s current Gaza military campaign include international attacks on a civilian population, murder, persecution and starvation. Khan said the Israeli state under Netanyahu and its military under Gallant have deprived civilians in Gaza of “all objects indispensable to human survival.”
Israel is not a party to the international treaty that governs the International Criminal Court, known as the Rome Statute, and from which Khan as prosecutor derives his legal power.
But the court has previously ruled it maintains legal jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip, because Palestinian political leaders agreed to grant the court such jurisdiction.
The U.S. and the European Union have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. Khan says that Sinwar, as the group’s most senior leader in Gaza, should face trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity. He is seeking Sinwar’s arrest along with Hamas’ top military leader, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, and the group’s top political figure, Ismail Haniyeh.
Diab — who is known as “the guest” for his habit of staying in a different home every night to avoid detection — and Sinwar are both believed by Israel to be in Gaza. Haniyeh, who learned three of his sons and four grandchildren were killed by an Israeli airstrike last month, is based in Qatar’s capital Doha.
Khan says all three men participated in crimes that include extermination, rape, murder and hostage-taking during the Oct. 7 attacks.
