Israel, Hamas and the United States have blasted the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) after he applied for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as several leaders of Palestinian militant organization Hamas.
ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan said on Monday that he is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and three leaders of the Palestinian Islamist group over war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu said he rejected "with disgust the prosecutor's comparison between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas," adding: "This is a complete distortion of reality."
"The outrageous decision by the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, to seek arrest warrants against the democratically elected leaders of Israel is a moral outrage of historic proportions. It will cast an everlasting mark of shame on the international court," Netanyahu said in a video message posted on social media.
Netanyahu accused Khan of pouring fuel on the fires of anti-Semitism and said his abuse of authority would turn the ICC into "nothing more than a farce."
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz labelled the long-expected move a "scandalous decision," which he said represents "an unrestrained frontal assault on the victims of October 7th and our 128 hostages in Gaza."
Hamas also slammed the request for arrest warrants against several of its leaders.
Khan's decision "compares the victim to an executioner and encourages the [Israeli] occupation to continue the war of extermination," the group said in a statement broadcast by the Hamas-affiliated TV station Al-Aqsa.
US President Joe Biden said it was "outrageous" that an arrest warrant was being sought for Netanyahu, while also asserting that what is happening in Gaza "is not genocide."
"Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence - none - between Israel and Hamas," Biden said in the Rose Garden of the White House at a Jewish American Heritage Month event.
"Contrary to allegations against Israel made by the International Court of Justice, what's happening is not genocide. We reject that," Biden added.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken characterized the ICC prosecutor's equivalence of Israel with Hamas "shameful."
"Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans," he said.
Neither Israel nor the United States have recognized the court.
The request for warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant relates to alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza Strip beginning on October 8, a day after Hamas militants launched their unprecedented attack on Israel.
Among the allegations are "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare" and "intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population," a statement from Khan's office said.
The warrants for Yehya al-Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, along with Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the head of the group's military wing, and Ismail Haniyeh, who sits atop Hamas' political wing and is seen as the group's overall leader, relate to alleged responsibility for murders, rapes, hostage-takings, torture and other inhumane acts from at least October 7.
Fighters from Hamas and other militant groups from Gaza killed some 1,200 people in the unprecedented massacre on communities and army bases in southern Israel on October 7. They also injured and raped countless others and took more than 200 hostages back to Gaza.
Israel responded by sealing off the Palestinian territory and launching a massive aerial campaign to eliminate Hamas. At the end of October, Israeli ground troops were sent in and much of the coastal strip has since been rendered uninhabitable.
Some 35,500 Palestinians are said to have been killed in the fighting so far, while thousands of others are threatened by famine.
In his statement, Khan said that evidence gathered by his office "shows that Israel has intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival."
This was achieved, among other things, "through the imposition of a total siege over Gaza," including the closure of border crossings from October 8 "for extended periods and then by arbitrarily restricting the transfer of essential supplies – including food and medicine – through the border crossings after they were reopened."
Regarding the Hamas leaders, Khan said evidence showed that al-Sinwar, al-Masri and Haniyeh "planned and instigated the commission of crimes on 7 October 2023, and have through their own actions, including personal visits to hostages shortly after their kidnapping, acknowledged their responsibility for those crimes."
He added that there were also "reasonable grounds to believe that hostages taken from Israel have been kept in inhumane conditions, and that some have been subject to sexual violence, including rape."
The ICC prosecutes individuals for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
The judges of the ICC's pre-trial chamber will now decide whether the requested arrest warrants will be issued, initiating proceedings against the accused.
Legally, an ICC arrest warrant against the persons concerned would mean that states that have signed the ICC statutes would be obliged to arrest these persons and hand them over to the court if they enter their territory.