On 21 November, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Court’s Prosecution filed the applications for the warrants.

A third arrest warrant was issued for Mohamed Deif, commander of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, who Israel says it killed months ago, but this has not been confirmed by the Palestinian side.

The warrants frame Netanyahu, Gallant, and even Israel’s war on Gaza within an official Western and international acknowledgement that Israel is committing flagrant violations of international law.

The impact far exceeds Netanyahu and Gallant alone, as the ICC warrants state that the two men “with others” bear “criminal responsibility” for committing “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

Observers say that the warrants also question the legitimacy of Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023, which the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is currently investigating for genocide, in international law the crime of all crimes. Both the ongoing ICJ case and the ICC arrest warrants are reflections of the damage done to Israel’s reputation because of its war on Gaza.

“This is really significant primarily because the ICC was never really seen as a mechanism to hold Western leaders accountable,” said Kristin Zornata, an Australian and Italian human rights lawyer. While the arrest warrants do not mention the word genocide, Zornata explained that Israeli officials, including Gallant, who described Palestinians as “human animals,” have expressed genocidal intent multiple times.

The Israeli discourse, narrative, and modus operandi in the ongoing war are a textbook application of the ten common stages of genocide, including classification, apartheid, symbolisation, discrimination, dehumanisation, polarisation, and denial, she explained.

“Everything that’s happened is really consistent with past genocides,” Zornata said.

“Like, for example, Gallant saying that we need to flatten all of Gaza, that there should be no electricity, no gasoline, moving vehicles, nothing. That qualifies as incitement or dehumanisation.”

The ICC warrants have sent shockwaves through Israel, whose officials immediately responded with accusations of anti-Semitism levelled at the court.

For Palestinians, including Hamas, the ICC’s announcement was met with relief and a sense of the long-awaited acknowledgement of decades of injustice. “This is a great day for justice, dignity, and the rule of law. At last the genociders are wanted for justice,” said Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani.

The warrants are unprecedented for Israel whose actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories have not been held to account before the intranational justice system. The ICC arrest warrants are also the first to be issued for a sitting head of a Western government, which Israel is perceived as being even though it is in the Middle East.

The Hague-based court was established as part of the post-World War II rules-based international order that observers have warned is being threatened by Israel’s live-streamed war crimes in Gaza over the past 13 months.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) have killed over six per cent of the Gaza Strip’s population and destroyed all civilian infrastructure there since October 2023.

UN officials have been sounding the alarm at the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, which is reeling from an enforced famine by the IOF that has been blocking essential aid to it for months. The official documented death toll of Palestinians killed by Israel exceeds 44,000 and over 100,000 wounded according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Tens of thousands of people are still missing under the rubble of Gaza, which the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrel described as the world’s biggest “open graveyard.”

With the exception of Germany and Hungary, the vast majority of EU countries including France, Spain, and Italy said they would comply with the ICC’s warrants and arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they cross their borders.

Canada and Australia also supported the ICC’s decision. The UK government said it “respects the independence” of the court but did not say if it was going to arrest Netanyahu if he enters the UK.

Jordan, Tunisia, and Palestine are the only Arab state parties to the Rome Statute that established the ICC. While Israel is not a member, the court has established that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian Territories of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, where war crimes have been committed, since Palestine is a member state.

Kareem Khan, the ICC’s prosecutor, initiated the arrest warrants in May by referring them to a pre-trial chamber in the court. The Hague-based court has not explained why it has taken it almost six months to issue the arrest warrants. In 2023, the court took only 23 days to issue an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of war crimes in Ukraine.

While the US said it “fundamentally rejects” the ICC’s arrest warrants and its jurisdiction over Israel, the EU’s Borrel said that the court’s decisions are “binding” for all European Union member states.

Israeli officials have accused the UN, its secretary general, and agencies that are assisting Palestinians of anti-Semitism. The ICC has been under immense pressure to reject its prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants of the Israeli officials, including, as Khan said in recent interviews, intimidation and threats.

Observers attribute the court’s delay to this background, since its judges have to weigh the political cost of ignoring live-streamed war crimes that could irreversibly damage the ICC’s reputation and raison d’etre and threaten the rules-based order against breaking Israel’s long-standing immunity and subjecting it to unprecedented prosecution.

Borrel cautioned against Israel’s weaponisation of anti-Semitism against its critics to deflect the question of accountability. “We have to use anti-Semitism with a moral precaution,” he said this week. “It has to be kept in accordance with the drama and tragedy of the Holocaust. I have the right to criticise political decisions of the Israeli government without being accused of anti-Semitism. This is not acceptable. That’s enough.”

Signs of emerging international intolerance of Israeli officials might be surfacing in the aftermath of the ICC’s decision.

On Monday, Australia denied Israel’s Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked an entry visa to attend a conference in Canberra. Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s office confirmed her visa application had been rejected without specifying why.

Shaked, a right-wing politician who has said that “all Palestinians are the enemy” and “snakes” and had advocated the killing of Palestinian mothers because they give birth to Palestinians, accused the Australian government of anti-Semitism.

Last week, Turkey rejected a request for Israeli President Isaac Herzog to use its airspace for his flight to attend the UN COP29 Climate Summit in Azerbaijan.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 28 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly