A man holds a crying child as displaced Palestinians check the destruction after an Israeli strike hit a UN-run school where people had taken refuge, in the Nousseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, Nov. 20, 2024. (Credit: Eyad Baba/AFP)
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas on Thursday welcomed the International Criminal Court's (ICC) issuance of arrest warrants against two Israeli leaders, without commenting on the warrant issued simultaneously by the Court against the head of the Islamist movement's armed wing.
“The State of Palestine welcomes the ICC's decision” to issue the warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to a statement released by the official Palestinian agency Wafa.
These mandates represent a “sign of hope and confidence in international law and its institutions,” adds the text, stressing “the importance of justice being done, of the guilty being held to account and of war criminals being brought to justice.”
“The State of Palestine calls on all member states of the ICC and the United Nations to enforce the Court's decisions and hand over the criminals to international justice,” says Wafa.
On Thursday, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant “for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed at least from Oct. 8, 2023 until May 20, 2024,” and against Mohammad Deif, head of the armed wing of Hamas “for crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed on the territory of the State of Israel and the State of Palestine since at least Oct. 7, 2023,” the date of the Palestinian movement's unprecedented attack on Israel from Gaza that triggered the current war.
'Modest and symbolic'
The arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant are an “important step towards justice, which can enable the victims to obtain reparation, but it remains modest and symbolic if it is not fully supported by all the countries of the world,” said Bassem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, in a statement, without making any mention of the arrest warrant for Deif.
Asked by AFP about the latter, a Hamas leader who did not wish to give his name said it was impossible to “compare the criminal who occupies and the victim.”
“Netanyahu and the leaders of the occupation are murderers responsible for massacres and acts of genocide,” he declared, ”our people and their resistance are defending the homeland that has been stolen and is occupied from extermination.”
Israel announced that it had killed Deif on July 13 in the Gaza Strip, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.
The unprecedented Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data, including hostages killed or who died in captivity in Gaza.
The Israeli military retaliation campaign in the Gaza Strip has left at least 44,056 people dead, most of them civilians, according to data from Gaza's Health Ministry.
