Demanding urgent ruling, Karim Khan asserts ‘it’s settled law’ that The Hague can order arrest of Israeli leaders, rejects claim that provision of Oslo Accords trumps its authority
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Friday called on judges to “urgently” rule on his request for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others linked to the Israel-Hamas war, saying the court has jurisdiction.
“It is settled law that the court has jurisdiction in this situation,” Prosecutor Karim Khan wrote in a 49-page legal brief.
Khan called on a panel of ICC pretrial judges to “urgently render its decisions” on the requests he filed in May for warrants for Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and three leaders of Hamas, two of whom have since been killed.
The brief filed by Khan came in response to legal arguments filed by dozens of countries, academics, victims’ groups and rights groups either rejecting or supporting the court’s power to issue arrest warrants in its investigation into the war in Gaza and the October 7 terror atrocities by Hamas that started the ongoing conflict.
In his May request for arrest warrants, Khan accused Netanyahu, Gallant and three Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif and Ismail Haniyeh — of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel.
Israel strongly rejects Khan’s accusations — which include charges of using starvation as a method of war — by pointing to the relatively low civilian-to-combatant ratio among the casualties in Gaza, the terror group’s use of civilians as human shields, and highlighting its efforts to expand humanitarian aid into the enclave, despite regular looting by gangs and terror groups.
Netanyahu called the prosecutor’s accusations against him a “disgrace,” and an attack on the Israeli military and all of Israel. He vowed to press ahead with Israel’s war against Hamas, with the aim of destroying the Gaza-ruling terrorist organization and returning the remaining hostages in Gaza. Hamas also denounced Khan’s actions, characterizing the request to arrest its leaders as equating “the victim with the executioner.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed around 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and seized 251 after storming into Israel from Gaza on October 7. In response, Israel launched an offensive that the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reports has killed over 40,000 people, an unverified figure that doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Many of the legal arguments filed to ICC judges in recent weeks focussed largely on the issue of whether the court’s power to issue warrants for Israeli leaders is overruled by a provision of the 1993 Oslo Accords peace deal. As part of the deal, the Palestinians agreed that they don’t have criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals.
Khan insisted the argument that the accords could nullify the court’s jurisdiction is “without merit.”
He called the legal argument “inconsistent with the proper interpretation and application” of an article in the court’s founding Rome Statute and “misunderstands basic concepts of jurisdiction under international law, including under the law of occupation, and how these concepts relate to the interpretation and application of the Statute.”
It remains unclear when judges will rule on Khan’s request for warrants.
Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/icc-prosecutor-insists-court-has-power-to-issue-warrants-for-pm-gallant-and-sinwar/.
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