Israel Gaza: Netanyahu ICC war crimes arrest warrant ‘outrageous’ says Biden

US President Joe Biden has referred to as an International Criminal Court struggle crimes arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister “outrageous”.

The ICC additionally issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu’s now sacked defence minister Yoav Gallant, and a Hamas commander, Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed in July.

Judges stated there have been “reasonable grounds” to consider the three males bore “criminal responsibility” for crimes through the struggle between Israel and Hamas.

Europe and the US have cut up of their response to the warrant, with a number of European nations saying they respect ICC selections. The British authorities stated it revered the independence of the courtroom.

“Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas,” Biden stated in a statement. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

Both Israel and Hamas reject the allegations made by the ICC.

In an announcement on Thursday, Netanyahu stated: “The antisemitic decision of the international court in The Hague is a modern Dreyfus trial, and it will end the same way.”

He was referring to a high-profile case of antisemitism in France simply over a century in the past.

“The court in The Hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation,” the Israeli PM stated.

“This when we have supplied Gaza with 700,000 tons of food to feed the people of Gaza. We issue millions of text messages, phone calls, leaflets to the citizens of Gaza to get them out of harm’s way – while the Hamas terrorists do everything in their power to keep them in harm’s way, including shooting them, using them as human shields.”

Netanyahu stated Israel would “not recognise the validity” of the ICC’s resolution.

Just this week, the UN warned that Palestinians were “facing diminishing conditions for survival” in components of northern Gaza beneath siege by Israeli forces as a result of nearly no support had been delivered in 40 days.

Gallant stated the ICC positioned “the state of Israel and the murderous leaders of Hamas in the same row and thus legitimises the murder of babies, the rape of women and the abduction of the elderly from their beds”.

Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, told the BBC that while he was critical of Netanyahu’s handling of the conflict with Hamas, he did not agree with the ICC’s decision.

“Israel has not dedicated genocide or struggle crimes that deserve these expenses in opposition to the prime minister and the minister of defence,” Olmert told Radio 4’s World Tonight programme.

Hamas made no mention of the Deif warrant but said the move against Netanyahu and Gallant constituted an “essential historic precedent, and a correction to a protracted path of historic injustice in opposition to our folks”.

Palestinians in Gaza expressed hope Israeli leaders would now be brought to justice.

Israel denies the allegation that its forces are committing genocide in Gaza, which is the subject of a separate case before the International Court of Justice.

The affect of the warrants announced by the ICC will rely on whether or not the courtroom’s 124 member states – which don’t embrace Israel or its ally, the US – determine to implement them or not.

But officials from the EU, Britain, France, the Netherlands and Italy have all made statements standing by the Court.

The prosecutor’s case against the three men stems from 7 October 2023, when Hamas gunmen attacked Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign to eliminate Hamas, during which at least 44,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

For Deif, an ICC pre-trial chamber discovered affordable grounds to consider he was “chargeable for the crimes in opposition to humanity of homicide; extermination; torture; and rape and different type of sexual violence; in addition to the struggle crimes of homicide, merciless therapy, torture; taking hostages; outrages upon private dignity; and rape and different type of sexual violence”.

It also said there were reasonable grounds to believe the crimes against humanity were “a part of a widespread and systematic assault directed by Hamas and different armed teams in opposition to the civilian inhabitants of Israel”.

For Netanyahu and Gallant, who was changed as defence minister earlier this month, the chamber discovered affordable grounds to consider that they “every bear prison duty for the next crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts collectively with others: the struggle crime of hunger as a technique of warfare; and the crimes in opposition to humanity of homicide, persecution, and different inhumane acts”.

It also found reasonable grounds to believe that “every bear prison duty as civilian superiors for the struggle crime of deliberately directing an assault in opposition to the civilian inhabitants”.