Israel has formally appealed to the International Criminal Court (ICC), demanding the removal of the chief prosecutor from the Gaza genocide case, and the nullification of arrest warrants issued for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant.
In a document published on Monday, Israel’s Foreign Ministry asserted, without providing evidence, that prosecutor Karim Ahamd Khan pursued Israel’s genocide case with “improper personal motives.”
Israel also demanded the revocation of the arrest warrants issued by the court on November 21, 2024, at Khan’s request, against Netanyahu and Gallant.
The indictments include the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts committed during the regime’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, which, since October 7, 2023, has killed at least 69,490 Palestinians and wounded 179,000 others.
Since the issuance of these warrants, Israel and its chief Western partners, especially the United Kingdom and the United States, have engaged in a campaign of intimidation and propaganda against the ICC and Khan.
In July, Khan and the ICC were threatened with being “destroyed” should they proceed with the case against the Israeli leadership.
Khan was also privately pressured by then-British Secretary of Foreign Affairs David Cameron in April 2024, who warned that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if the court moved forward with warrants against the Israeli authorities.
In May 2024, US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also “threatened” Khan with sanctions if he applied for the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.
Subsequently, the administration of US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Khan and four ICC judges.
Furthermore, Khan received a security briefing alerting him that Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, “was active in The Hague and posed a potential threat” to his safety.
Khan also met with Nicholas Kaufman in May, a British-Israeli lawyer at the ICC, to discuss the Israeli investigation.
In a note of the meeting on file at the ICC, Kaufman told Khan that if the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were not dropped, “they will destroy you, and they will destroy the court.”
Meanwhile, in a letter to the Israeli regime’s president, Isaac Herzog, Trump urged him to pardon Netanyahu in a separate domestic criminal case.
“I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister,” Trump wrote.
Netanyahu is currently facing charges of fraud, bribery, and breach of trust in three separate cases that began during Trump’s first term. He has pleaded not guilty and continues to claim his innocence while testifying in court.
In response to this intervention, Herzog declined to take a position, stating that a pardon request must follow official, established procedures.
“The president has made it clear on multiple occasions that anyone seeking a pardon must submit a formal request in accordance with the established procedures,” his statement clarified.
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