Israel Slams ICC decision to Continue Gaza War Investigation as ‘Politics in the Guise of International Law’

Israel lambasted a decision by appeals judges at the International Criminal Court on Monday to reject one in a series of legal challenges brought by Jerusalem against the court’s probe into its conduct of the Gaza war.

On appeal, judges refused to overturn a lower court decision that the prosecution’s investigation into alleged crimes under its jurisdiction could include events following the deadly attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

The ruling means the investigation continues and the arrest warrants issued last year for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant remain in place.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry called the ruling an example of the ICC‘s disregard for the sovereign rights of countries who are not members of the court, in a post on social media platform X.

“Israel rejects the ICC Appeals Chamber’s decision, by a narrow majority, to deny Israel’s right to receive advance notice, as demanded by the principle of complementarity particularly with regard to a democratic state with an independent and robust judicial system,” the ministry posted.

“This is yet another example of the ongoing politicization of the ICC and its blatant disregard for the sovereign rights of non-party states, as well as its own obligations under the Rome Statute,” it continued, adding: “This is what politics in the guise of ‘international law’ looks like.”

The ICC was founded in 2002 under a treaty giving it jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that were either committed by a citizen of a member state or had taken place on a member state’s territory.

The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.

Israel has adamantly denied war crimes in Gaza, where it has waged a military campaign to eliminate Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

A ceasefire agreement in the conflict took effect on Oct. 10, but the war destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure.

This ruling focuses on only one of several Israeli legal challenges against the ICC investigations and the arrest warrants for its officials. There is no timeline for the court to rule on the various other challenges to its jurisdiction in this case.

Last November, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and now-deceased Hamas terror leader Ibrahim al-Masri (better known as Mohammed Deif) for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.

Khan initially made his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation reportedly infuriated US and British leaders, as the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the allegations.

However, the ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave during the war.

Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

US and Israeli officials have issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, which launched the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 atrocities.