The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Fatou Bensouda, on 20 December 2019 announced an investigation into war crimes allegedly committed in Palestine by members of the Israeli military and Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups since 13 June 2014.

[4][6] The Palestinian National Authority submitted an ad hoc declaration on 22 January 2009, dated the previous day, accepting the Court's jurisdiction for "acts committed on the territory of Palestine since 1 July 2002.

In December 2019, Israel argued that the court has no jurisdiction because Palestine is not a sovereign state, in a brief by Israeli attorney general Avichai Mandelblit released hours before an announcement by Fatou Bensouda.

[4] In an interview with Times of Israel Bensouda described the charge of antisemitism as "a particularly regrettable accusation that is without merit" and emphasized that the court strives to be fair and impartial.

[5] On 16 March 2020, following the submission of amicus curiae briefs,[30] Bensouda requested another month to weigh the question of Palestinian statehood and jurisdiction over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.

[38] On 1 January 2015, the New York Times reported Shawan Jabarin, director of the human rights group Al Haq, saying that "the Palestinians would submit a request for retroactive jurisdiction to last June 13, to coincide with the period being considered" by the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict.

"[39][40] According to the Associated Press, "the Palestinians chose June 2014 as the start of the investigation to coincide with the run-up to Israel's devastating Gaza war that summer.

[44][45] On 8 April 2021, Israel said it would write to say that it would not cooperate with the ICC's investigation, arguing that the court did not have jurisdiction and that its own judiciary was capable of trying soldiers suspected of committing war crimes.

[46] Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad Al-Maliki met the ICC prosecutor Karim Ahmad Khan at the Hague on 9 June 2022 and "questioned the delay in the Court's investigations into the Palestinian issue".

[52][53] The following day, Khan visited Israel, after Israeli families of victims of the Hamas attacks appealed to the ICC to order an investigation into the killings and abductions.

[56][57][58] On 3 December, in a video message from Ramallah, Khan said the 2021 ICC investigation is "moving forward at pace, with rigor, with determination and with an insistence that we act not on emotion but on solid evidence."

[65] The prosecutor stated that he was trying to confirm the death of Deif, whom the IDF claimed had died in the al-Mawasi airstrike, in which case the warrant request would be withdrawn.

[67] After the announcement, an investigation found that Israel had for nearly ten years "deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries."

"[68][69][70] In January 2024, prior to his 20 May announcement, Khan convened an eight-person panel of legal and academic experts, including British barrister Amal Clooney, for reviewing his Palestine investigation.

Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC is expected to issue the arrest warrants if it is satisfied that there are "reasonable grounds to believe" that the persons have committed a crime within the jurisdiction of the Court.

[84] On 25 October, the Court announced that the presiding Judge of the panel considering the issue of warrants, Iulia Motoc was replaced on medical grounds by Beti Hohler.

"[86][87] 124 ICC member states are now required to arrest Netanyahu and Gallant if they enter their territory – including, but not limited to, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

"[3] Pre-Trial Chamber I stated that it found reasonable grounds that Deif bears direct and command responsibility "for the crimes against humanity of murder, extermination, torture, and rape and other form of sexual violence; as well as the war crimes of murder, cruel treatment, torture, taking hostages, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape and other form of sexual violence".

It found reasonable grounds that "the crimes against humanity were part of a widespread and systematic attack directed by Hamas and other armed groups against the civilian population of Israel".

[91] In 2024, an investigation by The Guardian, jointly with the Israeli magazines +972 and Local Call, uncovered a nine-year campaign by Israel using its intelligence agencies "to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries".

Israel had intercepted phone calls and other types of communications of several ICC officials including former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and her successor Karim Ahmad Khan, a surveillance campaign that was closely followed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom one intelligence officer described as being "obsessed".

[92] In one incident, two months after the opening of the investigation in 2015, ICC prosecutor Bensouda was approached by an unknown German woman who had given her an envelope that contained hundreds of dollars and a paper with a phone number originating in Israel.

[11] In another incident in 2019, Bensouda was "ambushed" by Mossad director Yossi Cohen, who had suddenly appeared in a New York hotel suite that was hosting an official meeting between the prosecutor and then Democratic Republic of the Congo president Joseph Kabila.

[97][61][98] Zeteo News published what it claimed was a scan of a 24 April letter sent to Khan by twelve Republicans in the U.S. Senate, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mitch McConnell, Marsha Blackburn, Katie Boyd Britt, Ted Budd, Kevin Cramer, Bill Hagerty, Pete Ricketts, Rick Scott, and Tim Scott, which requested the ICC not to make any attempt to pursue charges against Israeli officials over war crimes committed in the Gaza Strip.

"[105] Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was "troubling" that arrest warrants were simultaneously being sought for "the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the bloodthirsty terrorists that lead up Hamas.

"[106] Then British premier Rishi Sunak called the arrest warrants "deeply unhelpful", stating there is no "moral equivalence" between Israel and Hamas, adding that this move would make "absolutely no difference" to achieving wider peace in the Middle East.

"[116] Government representatives of Australia,[117] France, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Denmark, Norway, Chile, Canada, South Africa, Maldives, Oman and Jordan expressed support for the independence of the ICC.

[119] Following the release of the arrest warrants in late November 2024, the White House said that it “fundamentally rejects” the ruling, with US President Joe Biden denouncing it as "outrageous.

[120] Michael Waltz, set to become US national security adviser under President-elect Donald Trump, promised a "strong response" to the ICC's "antisemitic bias".

"[124] Czech PM Petr Fiala called the ICC decision "unfortunate" and said it "undermines authority in other cases by equating the elected representatives of a democratic state with the leaders of an Islamist terrorist organization.