THE United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and dozens of organisations and countries are striving to block or delay an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his genocidal war in the besieged Gaza Strip, a report says.
The ICC is currently seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes. In case such warrants are issued, then attention will probably also turn to governments like the US, the UK and Germany, as well as organisations and officials who aided the Tel Aviv regime in committing war crimes.
On Wednesday, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network said in a report that the US, the UK, Germany, and dozens of organisations and countries were trying to block the procedure of issuing arrest warrants by the ICC for Netanyahu and Gallant or at least pressure The Hague-based court to delay it.
The court has been investigating Israel’s actions in the occupied territories for the past three years – and more recently the brutal war in the Gaza Strip as well.
When the reports surfaced in April about seeking a course of action by the ICC chief prosecutor, the administration of US President Joe Biden was quick to condemn the move, saying that ‘the ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation and we do not support its investigation.’
Back in May, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said he had ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that the Israeli officials ‘bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza Strip) from at least 8th October 2023’.
This course of action at the ICC marks the first such move against the head of a close ally of the United States.
Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7th after Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.
Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 39,090 Palestinians and injured over 90,147. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.
