(Jerusalem) Israel announced Friday that it had handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) documents contesting the decision announced in May by its prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
“The State of Israel today filed its formal challenge to the jurisdictional competence of the ICC. [dans cette affaire] as well as the legality of the prosecutor’s request,” wrote Oren Marmorstein, spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, in a message on the social network X.
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan in May requested international arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant as well as several Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip and Israel since the Palestinian Islamist movement began hostilities on October 7.
Against this decision, “Israel presented two comprehensive legal opinions,” Mr. Marmorstein writes.
Israeli officials said on condition of anonymity that the documents had been submitted to pre-trial judges who will rule on the prosecutor’s request, a process that could take years.
PHOTO PETER DEJONG, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
The International Criminal Court
In one, “Israel stressed that the ICC clearly lacked jurisdiction over this case,” Mr. Marmorstein said.
In the other, the spokesman added, Israel details “the prosecutor’s violations of the statutes of the Court and the principle of complementarity, in that he did not give Israel the opportunity to exercise its right to investigate on its own the accusations made by the prosecutor” before the latter seized the judges of his request.
“Harmful” treatment
“A multitude of leading states […] “There are organizations and experts around the world who share the positions presented by Israel,” says Mr. Marmorstein, according to whom “no other democracy with an independent and respected judicial system like the one that exists in Israel has been treated in such a prejudicial manner by the prosecutor” of the court sitting in The Hague.
The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians killed on October 7, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data and including hostages who died or were killed in captivity in the Gaza Strip. Of the 251 people taken hostage on October 7, 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 who have been declared dead by the Israeli army.
More than 41,270 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory military campaign on the Gaza Strip, the majority of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government’s health ministry for Gaza, deemed reliable by the UN.
Mr. Khan requested arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant on May 20 for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity including “deliberate starvation of civilians,” “intentional homicide” and “extermination and/or murder.”
PHOTO SPENCER COLBY, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan
Mr Khan had simultaneously requested arrest warrants for Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar and other leaders of the movement for alleged crimes against humanity committed in Israel and the Gaza Strip, such as “extermination”, “rape and other forms of sexual violence”, “torture” and “hostage-taking”.
US President Joe Biden had deemed Mr Khan’s request to the two Israeli leaders “scandalous”. Rome had deemed it “unacceptable” and “absurd” to “equate Hamas and Israel”, a “parallel” also denounced by other European capitals.
Like Israel, the United States is not a party to the Rome Treaty that established the ICC, but that does not prevent it from bringing legal challenges to the court.
To prove a breach of the principle of complementarity, an applicant will have to demonstrate that the courts of a country are genuinely investigating, and if necessary, prosecuting the same individuals as those the Court is interested in, and for the same reasons, Gabriele Chlevickaite, an expert at the Asser Institute for International Law in The Hague, told AFP.
On the question of the Court’s jurisdiction, Mr.me Chlevickaite recalls that the latter already ruled in 2021 that its territorial jurisdiction extended to Gaza, and considers it “unlikely” that the Israeli request will lead to the reopening of this question.