Never before has a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC) had to rule on a request made by Israel. But on September 20, a week before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s planned trip to New York, where he is expected to address the UN General Assembly on Friday, September 27, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced the submission of two reports in The Hague, classified for the moment as confidential by the Court.
Israel is thus addressing the three judges of the pre-trial chamber who have been charged for more than four months with examining the arrest warrants requested by prosecutor Karim Khan against the Israeli Prime Minister, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas officials, Yahya Sinouar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif.
Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack blamed on the Jewish state in Tehran on July 31, and the head of its armed wing, Mohammed Deif, is believed to have been killed during a bombing in the southern Gaza Strip on July 13. The prosecutor withdrew his request for an arrest warrant against Mr. Haniyeh after obtaining evidence of his death. “It is remarkable to see Israel accept the legitimacy and status of the ICC by engaging directly with it,” said Canadian professor of international humanitarian law, Mark Kersten.
Weighing in on decisions
Since Palestine’s accession to the founding treaty of this Court in April 2015, and then the opening of an investigation in March 2021, the Hebrew State has never compromised “officially” in the proceedings, reluctant to take any action that could be considered as a form of recognition of jurisdiction; Israel has not ratified the 1998 Rome Treaty that created the ICC. During his visit to Israel and Ramallah in late November 2023, prosecutor Karim Khan came “on a private visit”, They insisted, and had done so at the invitation of the victims of the Hamas attack on October 7 in southern Israel.
During the summer, in a procedure opened by judges at the request of London, which hoped to prevent the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli officials, dozens of states, lawyers, professors and think tanks submitted briefs. Some, such as Germany or the Czech Republic, argued in favour of the Jewish state, as if in this legal battle waged by the Palestinians for almost fifteen years, Israel had to turn to allies.
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