In a major win for Israel, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court on Thursday unanimously ruled to reconsider an Israeli challenge against the court’s jurisdiction to try Israeli citizens for war crimes.

The judges wrote in their decision that the pretrial panel “committed an error of law by failing to sufficiently address Israel’s argument that it was entitled to make a jurisdictional challenge” under the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute.

The judges ordered the pretrial panel to issue a “new ruling on the substance of Israel’s challenge to the jurisdiction of the Court.”

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar responded to the ruling by stating: “The International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) doesn’t have, and never had jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and its former Minister of Defense. Israel is not a member of the ICC and is not party to the ‘Rome Statute.’ The ICC Appeals Court instructed the Court today, to do what it should have done from the start: to make a determination with respect to jurisdiction. On this topic, there is only one correct answer: the Court has no jurisdiction over Israel. The warrants were issued unlawfully. They are null and void.”

However, the judges did not suspend the absurd arrest warrants for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant, which were issued together with warrants against the leaders of Hamas who spearheaded the October 7 massacre, equating the democratically elected leaders of Israel with savage terrorist leaders.

In addition, the warrants were issued by the morally depraved Karim Khan, who is currently under investigation for retaliating against staff who reported allegations of his inappropriate behavior and abuse of a female aide. His behavior has enveloped the ICC in a major scandal as serious concerns have arisen regarding the integrity of  “external probe” against Khan due to his links to the investigative body, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), a watchdog that oversees probes of UN agencies.

Concerns have been raised at the highest level of the court, with one concern relating to Khan’s wife, Shyamala Alagendra, who previously worked at OIOS, has “deep connections” there, and also allegedly acted “highly inappropriately” following the claims against her husband, including contacting the victim directly.

Additionally, it is strongly suspected that Khan issued the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant in order to deflect attention from his case. Reuters reported in July that on May 20, the same day that Khan made a surprise request for warrants to arrest Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leaders, he suddenly canceled a scheduled trip to Israel to collect evidence on the decision.

Reuters spoke to eight people with direct knowledge of the matter, who said that plans for the visit had been discussed for months with US officials. The trip was intended to allow Israeli officials to present their position regarding the allegation of war crimes and for Khan and his team to collect “evidence.” Apparently, Khan decided that he didn’t need any “evidence” for his antisemitic claims.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)