Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday in a video statement in English called on the in which he called on the "leaders of the free world" to act against any move by the International Criminal Court based in The Hague to issue arrest warrants against senior Israeli government and military officials in order to put them on trial as war criminals.
It is still unclear if the court will actually go through with issuing the warrants.
Netanyahu said that if the warrants are issued "the ICC would be targeting all democracies because it would be undermining their inherent right to defend themselves against savage terrorism and wanton aggression." He also said that "It will also be the first time that a democratic country fighting for its life according to the rules of war is itself accused of war crimes."
3 View gallery
Benjamin Netanyahu, the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Joe Biden
(Photos: AP / Alex Brandon / EPA)
The prime minister called the possible issuing of the arrest warrants "an outrage of historic proportions."
"International bodies like the ICC arose in the wake of the Holocaust committed against the Jewish people. They were set up to prevent such horrors, to prevent future genocides," Netanyahu said.
"Yet now the International Court is trying to put Israel in the dock. It's trying to put us in the dock as we defend ourselves against genocidal terrorists and regimes, Iran of course, that openly works to destroy the one and only Jewish state.
"Branding Israel's leaders and soldiers as war criminals will pour jet fuel on the fires of antisemitism, those fires that are already raging on the campuses of America and across capitals around the world," he added.
Netanyahu called the Israel Defense Forces "one of the most moral militaries in the world." He said that the IDF "takes endless measures to prevent civilian casualties, measures that no other army takes. It does so while fighting a terrorist enemy which uses its own civilians as human shields."
"You know the truth. Hamas places its weapons, its terrorists in hospitals, schools, mosques and throughout civilian areas. They do this in order to win immunity and to maximize civilian casualties," Netanyahu said.
"So, while Hamas shows no care for the lives of Palestinians and steals humanitarian aid meant for civilians, Israel is facilitating a surge of humanitarian assistance to Gaza. And we do this to ensure that the Palestinian population’s humanitarian needs are met," he added.
"Rather than commend Israel for abiding by the rules of war while fighting an enemy that violates every rule of war, including holding 133 Israeli men, women and children hostage, who's the ICC targeting? The democracy called Israel."
Netanyahu called the ICC effort "an attempt to paralyze Israel’s very ability to defend itself" and "a grave threat to our security." He added that it is a " grave threat to our very existence."
Netanyahu on Tuesday during a meeting with officials from the Gvura and Tikva forums, which represent families of some killed soldiers and hostages held in Gaza who oppose a cease-fire deal with Hamas, pledged that Israel would launch an operation in Rafah in southern Gaza to rid it of Hamas terrorists.
3 View gallery
Benjamin Netanyahu meets with families of killed soldiers and hostages who do not support a cease-fire in Gaza
(Photo: Kobi Gideon, GPO)
"I met today with representatives of families of fallen and kidnapped families. I told them: we will complete my goals for the war. We will evacuate the civilian population, so that we can focus on the terrorists as we have done up until now. We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice. We will succeed in all the targets of the war, including the return of all our hostages," he said.
According to the prime minister: "There are many forces trying to prevent us from doing this. Recently another force joined them - the International Criminal Court in The Hague. This court has no authority over the State of Israel. The possibility that it will issue arrest warrants for war crimes against IDF commanders and state leaders, This possibility is a scandal on a historic scale. Eighty years after the Holocaust, the international bodies that rose up to prevent another Holocaust are considering denying the Jewish state its right to defend itself, to defend itself against whom? Against those who came and are still openly working to commit genocide on us. What an absurdity, what a distortion of justice and history."
US pressures ICC and is there even a decision in The Hague?
Democratic and Republican members of Congress, according to reports in the US, warned the court in The Hague that if it issues the arrest warrants against senior Israeli officials it will be met with an American response, and that legislative actions are already underway on the matter. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, told the news site Axios that he expects the House of Representatives to adopt a version of the bill proposed by Sen. Tom Cotton, a law that would allow sanctions to be imposed on International Criminal Court employees who are involved in investigations of the United States and its allies. However, he added that he "hopes it doesn't come to that."
The US is not a member of the Rome Statute on the basis of which the International Criminal Court operates, and neither is Israel. In 2021, the court determined that its chief prosecutor, currently British lawyer Karim Khan, could go forward with an investigation into war crimes in the territories of the Palestinian Authority, Gaza and East Jerusalem, after the Palestinian Authority joined the Rome Convention. After October 7, Khan opened an investigation into both the gruesome massacre and the events of the war, and now Israel fears arrest warrants could be issued.
It is not clear if there is indeed an intention to issue arrest warrants soon. Khan is under heavy pressure to issue such arrest warrants, and perhaps the goal would be to prevent Israeli action in Rafah. However, there currently is no indication that Khan actually decided to submit to the court in The Hague in a request for the issuance of arrest warrants.
Senior sources in the team that handles the international lawsuits in the courts in The Hague sharply criticized the "hysteria" projected by the prime minister. According to them, there has been a constant fear since the war broke out that measures would be taken against politicians and officers, but these have not been taken to date - except for measures such as the lawsuits against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague (ICJ), which is a separate institution from the ICC.
If a decision is made by Khan - he will have two options: either he will make a request publicly and publish a statement as was done in the case of Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir, or he will make a secret request as was done in most other cases - and then the court in The Hague will make a decision. It also is likely that Khan will also issue arrest warrants against the Hamas leadership.
Khan likely will not make such a dramatic move, on the scale of an international earthquake, without a green light, even if informal, from Washington and London.