TEL AVIV, May 21. /TASS/. The Israeli Foreign Ministry considers the decision made by International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan to seek an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as madness.
"The decision made today by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan is absurdity incarnate: he asks to equate the attackers and the attacked," an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said in an official statement.
"Israel is not a state party to the ICC, and in common with other countries, does not recognize jurisdiction over the conflict [in the Gaza Strip]," he added.
"Prosecutor Khan's accusations are baseless, unfounded, distort international law, trample the rules of the court itself, and harm every democratic country that defends itself and fights terrorism," the spokesman said. "We call for the outright rejection of the prosecutor’s request, and appeal to the countries of the free world to stand up against this outrageous move that undermines the basic principles of justice and morality," he added. "This is a dark day for the International Criminal Court," the spokesman added.
According to him, the decision made by Karim Khan is absurd because "Israel is operating in Gaza in order to defend its citizens, free the hostages, and remove Hamas' reign of terror so that it does not continue to threaten the security of Israel's citizens."
On May 20, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan asked the Pre-Trial Chamber to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country's Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. He claimed that the prosecutor's office has evidence that suggests that Netanyahu and Gallant "bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023." The prosecutor also requested arrest warrants for three leaders of the Palestinian radical Hamas movement.
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7, 2023, when militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian movement Hamas staged a surprise attack on Israeli territory from Gaza, killing residents of Israeli border settlements and taking over 240 hostages, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to the aggressive actions of Israeli authorities against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. In response, Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the crisis, and has been delivering air strikes on Gaza as well as some parts of Lebanon and Syria. Clashes have also been reported on the West Bank.