JUST as the fog was lifting over the mountains of the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan to reveal the remnants of the weekend catastrophe, another bit of startling news burst onto the scene. Over at the International Criminal Court (ICC), chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who has been investigating the war crimes taking place in the Israel-Palestine conflict, issued a statement announcing that he had requested arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant. In the same statement, Khan announced that he had also requested arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Muhammad Diab Ibrahim al-Masri.

Unsurprisingly, Khan’s statement was met with criticism from all sides. Hamas leaders accused him of equating the victims of the war with the perpetrators. Israel’s deputy attorney general in turn denounced the action, calling it completely “divorced from facts” and accused it of making a “mockery of the heinous charge of genocide”. The request for warrants is now with the judges of the ICC, who will evaluate whether the evidence submitted by Karim Khan is adequate for the warrants to be issued. If they decide that there is adequate evidence submitted in support of the arrest warrants, these will then be issued. Once issued, the warrants can be enforced in any one of the 124 countries that are signatories to the treaty that created the ICC, which is “the world’s only permanent international court with a mandate to investigate........

© Dawn