The International Criminal Court issued an arrest for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as three Hamas leaders. File Photo by Amir Cohen/UPI | License Photo
The International Criminal Court announced arrest warrants on Monday for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as well as three of Hamas’s top leaders in connection with the October attack on Israel, which sparked the current Israel-Gaza war.
ICC prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan revealed the warrants, saying that Netanyahu and Gallant bear responsibility for numerous war crime charges including using starvation as warfare, willfully causing suffering to civilians, intentionally attacking and directing attacks against civilians, extermination, persecution and “other inhumane acts.” Advertisement
“My office submits that the evidence we have collected, including interviews with survivors and eyewitnesses, authentication video, photo and audio material, satellite imagery and statements from alleged perpetrator groups, shows that Israel has intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival,” Khan wrote.
The Gaza Ministry of Health said in a social media update Saturday that 35,386 Palestinians have died and 79,366 more have been injured since the start of the war that followed the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
Arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant had been rumored since last month with Israel working through diplomatic back channels to attempt to block them. Advertisement
Khan also announced charges against Yahya Siwar, head of Hamas in Gaza, Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, commander of Hamas’s military wing, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’s political bureau.
Khan said all three were “criminally responsible” for numerous war crimes, including extermination, murder, taking hostages, torture, other inhumane acts, cruel treatment of prisoners outrage upon personal dignity against captives.
“We submit that the crimes against humanity charged were part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Israel by Hamas and other armed groups pursuant to organizational policies,” Khan said in his statement. “Some of these crimes, in our assessment, continue to this day.”
Israeli military forces on Friday said that they recovered the bodies of three people who were taken hostage during the Oct. 7 attack and then killed while escaping the Nova music festival.
