The ICC is right to pursue Benjamin Netanyahu

On 20 May, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan tried to push the borders of the ‘permissible’. In an extraordinary rebuke of existing practice, he not only sought arrest warrants for Hamas leaders who allegedly planned the 7 October, 2023, attack on Israeli military bases, kibbutzim, towns and the Nova music festival where 815 civilians, among them 36 children, and close to 400 members of the security forces were killed, and 251 others (mostly civilians) were abducted and taken to Gaza. In addition, Khan had the courage to ask the Pre-Trial Chamber to approve the arrest warrants of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its Defence Minister Yoav Gallant – two leaders aligned with powerful western countries such as United States, Germany and the United Kingdom – accusing them of using starvation as a method of war, denying entry of humanitarian relief supplies and deliberately targeting civilians.

My law students at Queen Mary, University of London, found the move quite astonishing given that for many of them the International Criminal Court is the ‘African Court’.