The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has applied for an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and a trio of senior Hamas leaders.
British lawyer Karim Khan KC said he was seeking a warrant for the Israeli leaders for accusations that they had engaged in the crime of extermination, causing starvation as a method of war – including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies – and deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.
The Khan has also applied to the court’s pretrial chamber for three Hamas members: Yahya Sinwar, alleged to be the mastermind behind the October 7 attack, Mohammed Deif, who leads Hamas’s al-Qassem Brigades, and Ismail Haniyeh, the terror group’s political leader, who is based in Qatar.
The three men are charged with murder, extermination, the taking of hostages, and rape and sexual assault in detention.
Speaking on CNN on Monday, Khan said: "The world was shocked on the 7th of October when people were ripped from their bedrooms, from their homes, the different kibbutzim in Israel.
"People have suffered enormously. We have a variety of evidence to support the applications that we have submitted to the judges.”
A panel of ICC judges will now consider Khan’s application for the arrest warrants.
Netanyahu previously said the prospect of Israeli officials being issued with ICC arrest warrants would be "an outrage of historic proportions". Israel and the United States are not currently members of the ICC, but the court claims jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
The ICC was “founded as a consequence of the Holocaust” and should not seek to prevent Israel’s right to defend itself, he said.
Asked about these comments, Khan told CNN: “Nobody is above the law.”
The crime of extermination, which both Hamas and Israeli leaders have been accused of, consists of "the act of killing on a large scale".
It was first prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials in the aftermath of the Second World War.
CEO of pro-Israel NGO the International Legal Forum, Arsen Ostrovsky, said Khan’s decision to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant was, “an unconscionable and unprecedented misuse of the law”.
In a statement, he said: “There is absolutely no comparison between a genocidal terrorist organization like Hamas and a democratic state like Israel, seeking to defend its citizens and rescue its hostages, following the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust…
“It will present a direct national security threat to the UK and severely curtail every democracy’s fight against radical Islamic terrorism by exposing them to spurious and unfounded charges, based purely on political considerations.”
Writing on X/Twitter, Israel’s far right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said: “We haven’t seen such a show of hypocrisy and hatred of Jews like that of the Hague Tribunal since Nazi propaganda.”
Sir Geoffrey Nice, a British human rights lawyer who prosecuted Slobodan Milošević at The Hague, welcomed Khan’s decision.
“I’m pleased to see that the law is now occupying the place it should,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Until now, politics has been suspected of holding back the application of the law and in a way that’s been very unsatisfactory – now the law is saying it’s going to play its part, so that’s a good thing.”
