- ” It’s An “Important Step Towards Justice”. -Palestine
- It’s Not Just Absurd But Also Anti-Semitic -Israel
By Kolawole Ojebisi
The arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Israel’s Prime Minsiter, Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minsiter, Yoav Gallant, has attracted differing reactions from the both Israel and Palestine.
The ICC also included Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif in the warrants charging the three prominent actors in the ongoing warfare with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The ICC’s 124 national members would now be obliged to arrest any of the three persons on their territories. Deif’s existence is still shrouded in controversy
Though Israel said in early August it had killed Deif in an air strike in southern Gaza in July, Hamas denies he is dead.
Meanwhile, the warrants have generated differing opinions from both warring parties.
Reacting to the warrants, Palestinian militant group, Hamas, described the ICC’s issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defence minister, as an “important step towards justice”.
“It’s an important step towards justice and can lead to redress for the victims in general, but it remains limited and symbolic if it is not supported by all means by all countries around the world,” Hamas political bureau member Bassem Naim said in a statement.
However, Netanyahu accused the ICC of anti-Semitism, calling it “a modern-day Dreyfus trial”.
“The anti-Semitic decision of the International Criminal Court is comparable to the modern-day Dreyfus trial — and it will end in the same way,” Netanyahu said in a statement, referring to the 19th century Alfred Dreyfus affair in which a Jewish army captain was wrongly convicted of treason in France.
Also, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said that the International Criminal Court had “lost all legitimacy”.
“This is a dark moment for the ICC,” Saar wrote on social media platform X, adding: “The body calling itself a ‘court’ issued absurd orders without authority… even though Israel is not a member of the court.”
