ICC urged to issue arrest warrant over war crimes in Palestine, Israel

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON (AA) — The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been urged to act against Israeli political and military officials by a UK-based internationally recognized solicitor advocate on Wednesday.

In an open letter he shared on X, Tayab Ali, director of the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians, called on ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants for alleged war crimes in Palestinian territories and Israel.

Underlining that he had "prepared war crimes cases myself," Ali wrote that he understands "the difficulties and hard work that must go into the preparation of a serious war crimes arrest warrant application."

"My own investigation has gathered sufficient evidence to support a prima facie allegation of war crimes against Israel’s political and military leadership and some rank and file soldiers as well as those complicit in those crimes," he added.

Ali said some of that evidence had been already shared with the ICC and domestic law enforcement agencies, adding that his center would "continue to prepare our evidence and continue to share it and use it to bring accountability where we can."

He added: "What Israel has done in Gaza has isolated it from the international community and it is now considered by many to be a pariah State. Even the United Nations (UN) has finally passed a vote ordering a ceasefire after months of failure and abusive veto use.

"The path to peace is now and has always been equality before the law and accountability for violating it. This applies to Palestinians and to Israelis, to the occupied and the occupier, to the oppressed and the oppressor.

"The rule of law must be absolute and justice must not be curtailed or denied."

Underlining that "taking hostages is a war crime," Ali said "collective punishment, the targeting of civilians, and civilian infrastructure including hospitals, schools and places of worship and the use of starvation as a weapon are war crimes.”

“If you show intention to destroy a people or a part of a people based on their nationality or religion the war crime is called Genocide."

- Breach of International Law

Ali highlighted that millions of Palestinians have been displaced in Gaza, while tens of thousands habe been killed, hundreds of thousands injured and a whole people "placed on the brink of starvation."

He added that Israel is about to make "the biggest mistake of any nation in our modern history."

"It has already violated the binding Security Council resolution to immediately stop hostilities," he wrote, describing this a clear violation of international law.

"Breaches of a Security Council resolution are serious and can even be been used to justify third state military intervention," he wrote.

Ali added that this breach "is happening right now in real time in front of all of us beamed onto our phones and TVs — we see it, we have tools to prevent it but not the will and so it continues."

"We have truly become people of the enlightened darkness where our profound knowledge has been rendered meaningless."

- ICC has 'power to stop Israel'

The director of the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians has urged Karim Khan to make it clear that "we will not tolerate war crimes whoever perpetrated them," by issuing an arrest warrant for "war crimes in Palestine and Israel." He stressed that the ICC has "the power to stop Israel."

Ali also pleaded to the ICC prosecutor that it was time for the warrant to also make clear "that our values are real and that all human life is precious and we will act to protect it - be it Israeli or Palestinian, Christian, Muslim or Jewish."

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Palestinian territories since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have since been killed and some 75,000 injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which in January issued an interim ruling that ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.