Jerusalem, Israel:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court over his conduct in the Gaza war will not stop him from defending Israel.

“No outrageous anti-Israel decision will stop us — and it won’t stop me — from continuing to defend our country at all costs,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “We will not bow to pressure,” he vowed.

The prime minister, along with his former defense minister Yves Gallant, is accused of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

He termed Thursday’s verdict as a ‘dark day in the history of nations’.

“The International Criminal Court at The Hague, which was established to protect humanity, has today become the enemy of humanity,” he said, adding that the allegations were “absolutely baseless”.

Israel has been fighting in Gaza since October 2023, when a cross-border attack by Hamas militants killed 1,206 people, mostly civilians.

Its reprisal campaign killed 44,056 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

UN agencies have warned of a serious humanitarian crisis, including a possible famine, due to lack of food and medicine in Gaza.

The court said it found Netanyahu and Gallant “criminally responsible” for the war crime of starvation as a method of war, as well as for crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts. have found “reasonable grounds” to do so.

Netanyahu said the court was accusing Israel of “fictitious crimes,” while ignoring “real war crimes, terrible war crimes being committed against us and against many people around the world.”

In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, the court also issued arrest warrants for the head of Hamas’s military wing, Mohammed Def, who Israel said was killed in an airstrike last July.

Hamas has never confirmed his death.

Netanyahu mocks court decision to issue warrant for “Mohammed Def’s body”.

(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Benjamin Netanyahu



Source link