The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant are also a reminder to governments arming Israel as it commits war crimes in Gaza

The international criminal court’s issuance of arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister Yoav Gallant is an important step toward justice for the Palestinian people, who too often have known only injustice. The court allows charges to move forward for war crimes and crimes against humanity focused mainly on the Israeli strategy of starving the civilians of Gaza and depriving them of medical and other necessities. The arrest warrants will make the world much smaller for these senior Israeli officials.

The Israeli government had advanced two principal arguments in the hope of avoiding the warrants, both of which the court rejected. First, Israel contended in essence that Palestine was not enough of a state to join the court and confer jurisdiction for crimes committed on its territory. The court reaffirmed a prior ruling finding that Palestine’s status as a non-member observer state of the United Nations general assembly enabled it to ratify treaties such as the ICC’s Rome statute.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 to 2022, is a visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs