US President Joe Biden has called an International Criminal Court war crimes arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister “outrageous”.
The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu’s now-sacked defense minister Yoav Gallant, and a Hamas commander, Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed in July.
Judges said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe the three men bore “criminal responsibility” for crimes during the war between Israel and Hamas.
Europe and the US have split in their response to the warrant, with several European countries saying they respect ICC decisions. The British government said it respected the independence of the court.
“Whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas,” Biden said 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 a statement on Thursday, Netanyahu said: “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 just over a century ago.
“The court in The Hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation,” the Israeli PM said.
“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 said Israel would “not recognize the validity” of the ICC’s decision.
Just this week, the UN warned that Palestinians were “facing diminishing conditions for survival” in parts of northern Gaza under siege by Israeli forces because virtually no aid had been delivered in 40 days.
