The chief pros­e­cu­tor of the In­ter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court said Mon­day he is seek­ing ar­rest war­rants for Is­raeli and Hamas lead­ers, in­clud­ing Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu, in con­nec­tion with their ac­tions dur­ing the sev­en-month war be­tween Is­rael and Hamas.

Karim Khan said that he be­lieves Ne­tanyahu, his de­fense min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant and three Hamas lead­ers — Yehia Sin­war, Mo­hammed De­if and Is­mail Haniyeh — are re­spon­si­ble for war crimes and crimes against hu­man­i­ty in the Gaza Strip and Is­rael.

The pros­e­cu­tor must re­quest the war­rants from a pre-tri­al pan­el of three judges, who take on av­er­age two months to con­sid­er the ev­i­dence and de­ter­mine if the pro­ceed­ings can move for­ward.

Is­rael is not a mem­ber of the court, and even if the ar­rest war­rants are is­sued, Ne­tanyahu and Gal­lant do not face any im­me­di­ate risk of pros­e­cu­tion. But Khan’s an­nounce­ment deep­ens Is­rael’s iso­la­tion as it press­es ahead with its war, and the threat of ar­rest could make it dif­fi­cult for the Is­raeli lead­ers to trav­el abroad.

Is­raeli For­eign Min­is­ter Is­rael Katz said the chief pros­e­cu­tor’s de­ci­sion to seek ar­rest war­rants against Is­rael’s lead­ers is “a his­toric dis­grace that will be re­mem­bered for­ev­er.”

He said he would form a spe­cial com­mit­tee to fight back against any such ac­tion and would work with world lead­ers to en­sure that any such war­rants are not en­forced on Is­rael’s lead­ers.

Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh speaks during a press briefing after his meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, March 26, 2024. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in connection with their actions during the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas. Haniyeh is one of the three Hamas leaders believed to be responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

Vahid Salemi

Both Sin­war and De­if are be­lieved to be hid­ing in Gaza as Is­rael tries to hunt them down. But Haniyeh, the supreme leader of the Is­lam­ic mil­i­tant group, is based in Qatar and fre­quent­ly trav­els across the re­gion.

Ben­ny Gantz, a for­mer mil­i­tary chief and mem­ber of Is­rael’s War Cab­i­net with Ne­tanyahu and Gal­lant, harsh­ly crit­i­cized Khan’s an­nounce­ment, say­ing Is­rael fights with “one of the strictest” moral codes and has a ro­bust ju­di­cia­ry ca­pa­ble of in­ves­ti­gat­ing it­self.

“The State of Is­rael is wag­ing one of the just wars fought in mod­ern his­to­ry fol­low­ing a rep­re­hen­si­ble mas­sacre per­pe­trat­ed by ter­ror­ist Hamas on the 7th of Oc­to­ber,” he said. “The pros­e­cu­tor’s po­si­tion to ap­ply for ar­rest war­rants is in it­self a crime of his­toric pro­por­tion to be re­mem­bered for gen­er­a­tions.

Is­rael launched its war in re­sponse to an Oct. 7 cross-bor­der at­tack by Hamas that killed some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and took 250 oth­ers hostage. The Is­raeli of­fen­sive has killed over 35,000 Pales­tini­ans, at least half of them women and chil­dren, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est es­ti­mates by Gaza health of­fi­cials. The Is­raeli of­fen­sive has al­so trig­gered a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza, dis­plac­ing rough­ly 80% of the pop­u­la­tion and leav­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple on the brink of star­va­tion, ac­cord­ing to U.N. of­fi­cials.

Yehia Sinwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, greets his supporters during a meeting with leaders of Palestinian factions at his office in Gaza City, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court said Monday he is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in connection with their actions during the seven-month war between Israel and Hamas. Yehia Sinwar is one of the three Hamas leaders believed to be responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Adel Hana

Speak­ing of the Is­raeli ac­tions, Khan said in a state­ment that “the ef­fects of the use of star­va­tion as a method of war­fare, to­geth­er with oth­er at­tacks and col­lec­tive pun­ish­ment against the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion of Gaza are acute, vis­i­ble and wide­ly known. ... They in­clude mal­nu­tri­tion, de­hy­dra­tion, pro­found suf­fer­ing and an in­creas­ing num­ber of deaths among the Pales­tin­ian pop­u­la­tion, in­clud­ing ba­bies, oth­er chil­dren, and women.”

The Unit­ed Na­tions and oth­er aid agen­cies have re­peat­ed­ly ac­cused Is­rael of hin­der­ing aid de­liv­er­ies through­out the war. Is­rael de­nies this, say­ing there are no re­stric­tions on aid en­ter­ing Gaza and ac­cus­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions of fail­ing to dis­trib­ute aid. The U.N. says aid work­ers have re­peat­ed­ly come un­der Is­raeli fire, and al­so says on­go­ing fight­ing and a se­cu­ri­ty vac­u­um have im­ped­ed de­liv­er­ies.

Of the Hamas ac­tions on Oct. 7, Khan, who vis­it­ed the re­gion in De­cem­ber, said that he saw for him­self “the dev­as­tat­ing scenes of these at­tacks and the pro­found im­pact of the un­con­scionable crimes charged in the ap­pli­ca­tions filed to­day. Speak­ing with sur­vivors, I heard how the love with­in a fam­i­ly, the deep­est bonds be­tween a par­ent and a child, were con­tort­ed to in­flict un­fath­omable pain through cal­cu­lat­ed cru­el­ty and ex­treme cal­lous­ness. These acts de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty.”

Af­ter a brief pe­ri­od of in­ter­na­tion­al sup­port for its war, Is­rael has faced in­creas­ing crit­i­cism as the war has dragged on and the death toll has climbed.

Is­rael is al­so fac­ing a South African case in the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice ac­cus­ing Is­rael of geno­cide. Is­rael de­nies those charges.

Khan’s re­quest for war­rants in the Is­rael-Gaza con­flict comes 14 months af­ter the court is­sued an ar­rest war­rant for Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin for war crimes, ac­cus­ing him of per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ab­duc­tions of chil­dren from Ukraine. —JERUSALEM (AP)

_________

Sto­ry by JOSEF FE­D­ER­MAN | As­so­ci­at­ed Press.  Mol­ly Quell in Delft, Nether­lands, and Mike Corder in Ede, Nether­lands, con­tributed.