International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Gallant

(Patria) - The International Criminal Court announced today that it has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes they are accused of committing in the Palestinian territories, including the Gaza Strip.

The Pre-Trial Chamber of the Hague Court said it had “issued arrest warrants for two individuals, Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Prosecution filed applications for the arrest warrants”.

In doing so, it also unanimously rejected Israel's challenges under Articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute, the statement said.

Regarding their alleged crimes, the court stated that it “found reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing acts together with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.

The arrest warrants come as Israel's genocidal offensive in the Gaza Strip recently entered its second year, in which approximately 44,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed and more than 103,000 injured.

Israeli attacks have internally displaced nearly the entire population of the territory amid a sustained and deliberate blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, pushing the population to the brink of famine.