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International criminal court’s chief prosecutor has applied for arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif
Welcome to our latest live blog on the Israel-Gaza war and the wider Middle East crisis. I am Martin Belam and I will be with you for the next while.
France says it supports the independence of the international criminal court (ICC), after its prosecutor requested arrest warrants for leaders from Israel, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and those from Hamas.
Joe Biden has attacked as “outrageous” an application by the international criminal court for warrants seeking the arrest of Israeli officials. “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,” Biden said in the statement. “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”
The chief prosecutor of the international criminal court said he is seeking arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, the denial of humanitarian relief supplies and deliberately targeting civilians. Hamas leaders and officials Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh were named as being wanted for crimes of extermination, murder, hostage taking, rape, sexual assault and torture.
Senior figures in the Israeli government have reacted angrily to the announcement which Israel’s foreign minister Israel Katz said was “scandalous” and tantamount to attacking the victims of 7 October. Finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said the decision would be “the last nail in the dismantling of this political and antisemitic court,” adding that “arrest warrants [for Netanyahu and Gallant] are the arrest warrants for all of us”. President Isaac Herzog said it was “one-sided” and in “bad faith”, and that Israel “expects all leaders in the free world to condemn outright this step and firmly reject it.”
The move has also been condemned by senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhuri, who said the decision “equates the victim with the executioner” and encourages Israel to continue its “war of extermination” in Gaza. Wasel Abu Youssef of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said there was confusion over who was the victim, and that “The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves. The ICC is required to issue arrest warrants against Israeli officials who are pursuing crimes of genocide in the Gaza Strip.”
UN officials warned Monday that food and medicine for Palestinians in Gaza are piling up in Egypt because the Rafah crossing remains closed and there has been no aid delivered to a UN warehouse from the US-built pier for two days, according to Reuters. Senior UN aid official Edem Wosornu said there were insufficient supplies and fuel to provide any meaningful level of support to the people of Gaza. “We are running out of words to describe what is happening in Gaza. We have described it as a catastrophe, a nightmare, as hell on earth. It is all of these, and worse,” she said.
An Australian doctor trapped inside one of Gaza’s few remaining functioning hospitals has urged the Australian government to do more to get him and his colleagues out and additional medical aid in. Sydney-based Dr Modher Albeiruti is among 16 international doctors and medical workers who have been stranded inside the European hospital in Khan Younis since Israel took control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing this month.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has announced a five-day public mourning period after the deaths of president Ebrahim Raisi, foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other passengers in a helicopter crash on Sunday. The bodies were recovered from a mountain crash site on Monday morning.
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