US pressure could derail ICC arrest warrants for Israeli leaders

Court faces pressure after chief prosecutor announces he is seeking to arrest Israeli leaders for actions in Gaza.

When Israel started relentlessly bombing Gaza, Rasha Abu Shaban packed a handful of belongings and fled south with her parents and siblings.

Her brother stayed behind out of fear that he would never be able to come home again.

Abu Shaban was in a displacement camp in Rafah when she learned that an Israeli missile had struck her home.

“My brother was killed at the beginning of November. He was there with another family that was displaced in our house,” Abu Shaban, 38, told media. “We heard from [our neighbours] that an ambulance was prevented from reaching them.”

Abu Shaban is one of tens of thousands of Palestinians hungry for justice after losing loved ones, property and livelihoods to Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, which began after a Hamas-led attack on Israeli communities and military outposts on October 7.

About 1,139 Israelis were killed in that attack, and 250 were taken captive. Since then, Israel has killed more than 35,500 Palestinians in a campaign of violence that UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese and other legal experts have described as a genocide.

On May 20, after months of gathering evidence, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant as well as for Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar; the head of the movement’s political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh; and the head of its military wing, Mohammed Deif.

Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of using “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare”, “extermination”, “willfully causing great suffering” and deliberately “directing attacks against civilians”.

While Khan’s announcement gives Abu Shaban hope that Palestinians may obtain justice someday, she fears that Israel and the US will pressure ICC judges to reject Khan’s requests.

“I have mixed feelings,” she said. “I really worry that the US and Israel will … stop the issuing of the arrests [warrants] from happening.”

Weeks before Khan’s announcement, senior Republican lawmakers in the US submitted a letter to his office that threatened to bar him and his family from the country if he applied for warrants against Israeli leaders.

US threats

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Khan said a senior US elected official even told him that the ICC “was built for Africa” and for “thugs like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin” but not Western or Western-backed leaders.

“We don’t view it like that,” Khan said. “This court is the legacy of Nuremberg, and this court is a sad indictment of humanity, and this court should be the triumph of law over power and brute force.”

Netanyahu, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have all made similar statements

But Adil Haque, a legal scholar at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said those arguments have no legal weight.

Israel’s allies are using a “rhetorical device” to undermine Khan’s equal application of international law, he explained.

“Basically, the prosecutor is saying that officials in the Israeli government have violated international law and that Hamas leaders have violated international law and that those violations are serious,” Haque told media.

“People can discuss if charges on Hamas leaders are better or worse [than the ones brought against Israeli leaders], but that’s not the prosecutor’s concern.”

Three judges from the ICC’s pre-trial chamber are now deliberating over whether to issue the arrest warrants.

In a statement, Human Rights Watch urged all members of the ICC to guard the court’s independence against “hostile pressure that is likely to increase while the ICC judges consider Khan’s request”.

The US – which is not a member of the Rome Statute, the treaty that underpins the ICC – is reportedly considering sanctions against court officials.

Three years ago, the Biden administration lifted sanctions former President Donald Trump imposed on former ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other officials.