The ICC takes aim at a sitting prime minister

On 20 May, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, did what prosecutors are supposed to do: he asked judges to issue arrest warrants. The targets were the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu; Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant; and three leaders of Hamas: Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh. The warrants, if issued, would be for war crimes and crimes against humanity alleged to have been committed since the attacks of 7 October 2023. Nothing about the request is small, and nothing about it is easy.

The charges, as outlined by the prosecutor’s office, track the two sides of the conflict. Against the Israeli leaders, the allegations centre on the conduct of the war in Gaza: starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, denial of humanitarian relief, and directing attacks against a civilian population. Against the Hamas leaders, the allegations concern the massacre of 7 October itself: extermination, murder, hostage-taking, torture and sexual violence. The prosecutor is careful to say that he applies the same standard to both, and that under the Rome Statute there is no exemption for senior officials, no immunity that shields a head of government from the court’s jurisdiction. That, of course, is precisely the point of contention.

The immediate reactions were as predictable as they are revealing. Israel called the request a scandal and a distortion, backed by the United States, which said the court has no jurisdiction and that the move would complicate ceasefire efforts. Hamas denounced the charges against its leaders as an insult to the Palestinian resistance. Human rights groups, meanwhile, described the request as a landmark moment, the first time the court has sought warrants against the leader of a state closely allied with the West. The division is not between law and politics; it is between two ways of understanding what the law is for.

It is worth being honest about the court’s limits. The ICC has no police force, no army and no enforcement mechanism of its own. It depends on member states to arrest suspects, and neither Israel nor the United States is a member, which means that even if the warrants are issued, Netanyahu is unlikely to travel to a country that would hand him over. The practical effect, in the short term, is reputational and diplomatic rather than physical: travel plans shrink, allies are put on the spot, and the language of law enters a conflict that has largely been discussed in the language of force.

And yet the symbolic weight is real, and it is not trivial. For decades the accusation against international justice has been that it is a Western instrument, used against African and other leaders while sparing the powerful. A sitting prime minister of Israel, the closest ally of the United States in the region, being named alongside Hamas leaders in the same request, is a challenge to that narrative from the inside. If the judges confirm the warrants, every future American or Israeli statement about international law will have to answer the fact that the court found plausible grounds in both directions.

None of this tells us whether the warrants will actually be issued, or whether they would survive appeal. But the request itself has already achieved something: it has placed the conduct of the war, on both sides, inside the framework of legal judgment, not just military necessity. Whether the world agrees on what that judgment should be is a question the coming months will answer. For now, the court has done the one thing it was created to do, and the consequences, for everyone, are out of its hands.