On 22 July 2024 the International Criminal Court accepted a request by four leading NGOs to file a challenge to the court’s jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant.

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), The International Legal Forum (ILF), B’nai B’rith (BBUK) and the Jerusalem Initiative (JI), will now be able to challenge the ICC’s jurisdiction to issue warrants for the arrest of the two Israeli Ministers, sought by the ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, for alleged war crimes in Israel’s response to the Hamas massacre of October 7th.

The decision follows the Court’s grant of leave to the UK government on 27 June 2024, to provide a submission on whether the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over Israeli nationals, in circumstances where ‘Palestine’ cannot exercise criminal jurisdiction over Israeli nationals pursuant to the Oslo Accords.

The NGOs support the UK’s position that under the Oslo Accords, ‘Palestine’ does not have criminal jurisdiction over Israeli citizens that can be delegated to the ICC. They also assert that the Court lacks jurisdiction on the basis that ‘Palestine’ cannot be considered a state under international law. Furthermore, the NGOs argue that the Prosecutor failed to properly take into account one of the most foundational principles upon which the Court is governed, that of complementarity, given that Israel has a widely respected, independent and robust national legal system.

The NGOs also refer to documents showing that the ICC’s previous ruling was based on incorrect information that the UN Secretary General had circulated the Palestinian request to join the ICC to existing members of the ICC for comment before accepting it.

The Court also accepted a separate request by these NGOs together with the Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) to submit written observations regarding serious factual inaccuracies and the omission of highly relevant information and evidence contradicting the allegations in the Prosecutor’s Applications for arrest warrants of the Israeli leaders.

However, the Court ordered that all these observations must be made in a single 10-page document.

Jonathan Turner, Chief Executive of UK Lawyers for Israel:

“We welcome the opportunity to challenge the jurisdiction of the ICC, particularly in the light of our inquiries, which showed that neither the ICC itself nor its members have even seen the key document on which its previous majority ruling on jurisdiction was based. However, the condition that our submissions detailing the numerous inaccuracies in the allegations made by the Prosecutor, as well as submissions on jurisdiction and admissibility, must all be confined within 10 pages, is a highly unsatisfactory restriction. It will seriously curtail our attempt to ensure that the Court does not act on the basis of false information. It is a matter of great concern, liable to produce grave injustice, if the Court is not willing to examine the detailed evidence we present demonstrating the wholesale inaccuracy of the Prosecutor’s allegations against Israel.”

Arsen Ostrovsky, Chief Executive of The International Legal Forum:

“The ICC Prosecutor’s decision to seek arrest warrants against the Prime Minister and Defense Minister of Israel was an egregious and unprecedented violation of every norm of international law. It not only entirely lacks substance, but also underscores the court’s blatant lack of jurisdiction in the first instance to pursue the Israeli leaders, who have already gone to unprecedented levels to abide by international law in response to the terrorist group Hamas, who committed the massacre of October 7 and continues to hold 120 hostages captive in Gaza. Furthermore, the Prosecutor’s attempt to draw moral equivalence between terrorist leader who committed the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and leaders of the democratic State of Israel, was utterly obscene, unconscionable and cannot be permitted to stand.”

See the following documents:

Request for leave to make observations on accuracy

Request for Leave to Make Observations on Jurisdiction and Admissibility

Annex to Request for Leave to Make Observations on Jurisdiction Iris

Decision of the Court, granting leave, dated 22 July 2024 ICC-0118-249