Anyone sought by International Criminal Court arrest warrants should surrender to the Hague court for a fair trial and face justice, said a key UN official on Friday one day after landmark arrest warrants were issued for Israel’s premier and former defense minister,
"I urge all individuals subject to ICC arrest warrants to surrender to the Court to face justice in a fair trial," Ben Saul, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, said on X.
"I urge all countries to cooperate with the Court to enforce arrest warrants," he added.
The court on Thursday said it “found reasonable grounds” to believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant bear criminal responsibility for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts."
Both “bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population,” it said.
Gallant lost the Defense Ministry helm just weeks ago, after leading a brutal Israel offensive from October 2023 until early November – over a year.
The warrants come as Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza recently entered its second year, having already killed some 44,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injuring over 104,000.
The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing and deliberate blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, pushing the population to the brink of starvation.