The International Criminal Court (ICC) has denied that it had issued new arrest warrants for Israeli political and military officials, following a Haaretz report published on Sunday claiming The Hague has quietly sought arrest warrants against several Israeli officials.
According to the Haaretz report, citing a diplomatic source, the warrants target three Israeli politicians and two IDF officials.
ICC spokesperson Oriane Maillet said in a note to journalists that the report in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper was not accurate, and that the court “denies the issuance of new arrest warrants in the situation in the state of Palestine.”
Until now, the only publicly known ICC arrest warrants against senior Israeli figures were those issued in November 2024 against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
International Law expert Prof. Eliav Lieblich told Haaretz that the ICC does not actually require the court to notify suspects of arrest warrants.
“The considerations for making the warrants public, as was done in the cases of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu, and Gallant, are deterrence. The considerations for secrecy are increasing the chances that the person will arrive somewhere where they can be arrested,” he said.
On Thursday, the lawyers of a Palestinian-Gazan man made a formal submission to the ICC prosecutor demanding that 14 Hamas leaders be investigated for crimes committed against the Palestinian people.
To date, the ICC has not charged even one Hamas leader with any crimes committed against their own civilians. This is despite the fact that the ICC has charged leaders of Hamas and Israel with crimes committed against each other’s populations during the Israel-Hamas War.
Mathilda Heller and Reuters contributed to this report.
