The Hague, August 25 (RHC)-- The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan has urged pretrial judges to urgently address the issuance of a ruling on warrants for Israeli leaders wanted for the genocide of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces launched their war on Gaza last October after Hamas carried out a landmark operation inside the occupied territories which caught the regime by surprise. 

Now, it has been more than three months since Khan announced that he had reasonable grounds to believe Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders pushing the continuous war on Gaza “bear criminal responsibility” for “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

In May, Khan released a statement outlining a list of crimes, including “starvation of civilians” and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.”

Karim Khan, a British national, cited “widespread and systematic attacks against the Palestinian civilian population” as crimes that in his assessment have continued to this day.   The panel of pretrial judges was to consider Khan’s request for the arrest warrants.

Khan has now called on the judges of the tribunal to “urgently render its decisions” on his request for the arrest warrants.  Khan noted that the ICC court has jurisdiction over the most serious crimes facing the international community as a whole, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

“It is settled law that the Court has jurisdiction in this situation,” Khan wrote in his legal briefing in response to legal arguments filed by dozens of countries, academics, victims’ groups and rights groups either rejecting or supporting the ICC court’s power to issue arrest warrants in its investigation into the war in Gaza.

[ SOURCE:  PRESS TV ]