The International Criminal Court (ICC) is reportedly considering issuing arrest warrants for far-right Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir over their involvement in promoting West Bank settlements.
The court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, was preparing to seek the pair’s arrests before he himself was suspended pending an investigation in allegations of sexual assault against him, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Citing current and former court officials, the report suggests that the application would centre on whether Smotrich and Ben-Gvir “committed war crimes by pushing construction of West Bank Jewish settlements”.
The duo, leaders of the Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit parties respectively, have both been vocal advocates of Israel asserting “sovereignty” over the West Bank and actively encouraged settlement in the territory. Indeed, Ben-Gvir himself lives in Kiryat Arba, a settlement near Hebron.
The legality of settlements is heavily disputed – they are widely seen as illegal under international law, including by the UK government, on the basis that they constitute the transfer of Israeli nationals into occupied territory.
But Israel insists that the West Bank is not occupied, maintaining that it was illegally annexed by Jordan in 1950 and then liberated during the Six Day War in 1967.
According to the Journal, Khan was preparing a case to petition ICC justices for leave to issue the warrants prior to his suspension.
However, the effort was derailed when he stepped down from his role while the investigation into claims that he sexually assaulted a colleague is completed.
The 55-year-old has been accused by a fellow lawyer, a Malaysian woman in her 30s, of pressuring her into “coerced sexual intercourse”.
The woman told the Journal that she had asked to meet Khan is order to discuss the manner in which he treated his staff, which she suggested was inappropriate.
However, she claimed that, when she arrived in his suite at the Millennium Hilton Hotel in New York, he “took her hand and eventually pulled her to the bed”.
"Then he pulled off her pants and forced sexual intercourse,” the report added.
The woman alleged that Khan performed “non-consensual sex acts” on her on multiple occasions in a number of countries, including the US, Colombia, France and Chad, as well as at his wife’s home in the Netherlands.
An investigation is currently underway, conducted by the ICC’s external watchdog, the Independent Oversight Mechanism, with Khan firmly maintaining his innocence.
The decision as to whether to pursue the new warrants will now reportedly fall to Khan’s deputies, who have taken on his work in his absence.
It is unclear what their next steps will be, but the Journal cited court sources suggesting that going after the two high-profile ministers would be a political risk without the chief prosecutor present.
Relations between the court and Israel are already strained after it issued warrants for prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Perhaps even more significantly, the ICC’s relationship with its host country – the US – has deteriorated significantly following the election of President Trump, with Washington imposing crippling sanctions on the court which have reportedly seen its work all but grind to a halt.
