JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that if the International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for government officials on charges related to the conduct of against Hamas it would be a scandal on a historic scale.
Israeli officials have expressed concern in recent days that the ICC is preparing warrants for senior government officials, in what would be the most serious international legal action taken against Israel since the Gaza war erupted in October.
The ICC - which can charge individuals with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide - is investigating Hamas' Oct. 7 cross-border attack and Israel's devastating military assault on Hamas-ruled Gaza, now in its seventh month.
"The possibility that they will issue arrest warrants for war crimes against IDF (Israel Defence Force) commanders and state leaders, this possibility is a scandal on a historic scale," Netanyahu said in a video statement.
Israel says Hamas' attack killed about 1,200 people; Gaza's health ministry says more than 34,500 Gazans have been killed in Israel's air and ground war, with most of the 2.3 million population displaced and the territory widely devastated.
United Nations bodies and human-rights groups have accused Israel of violating international humanitarian law during its military operation in Gaza, something it denies.
Israel is not a member of the ICC and does not recognize its jurisdiction, but the Palestinian territories were admitted with the status of a member state in 2015.
In October ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan said the court had jurisdiction over any potential war crimes committed by Islamist Hamas fighters in Israel and by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu said that any ICC arrest warrants would not affect Israel's actions and, he said, would be the first time that a democratic country was accused by the court of war crimes.
"I want to make one thing clear: no decision, neither in The Hague nor anywhere else, will harm our determination to achieve all the goals of the war - the release of all our hostages, a complete victory over Hamas and a promise that Gaza will no longer pose a threat to Israel," he said.
Prosecutors from the International Criminal Court have interviewed staff from Gaza's two biggest hospitals, sources told Reuters, the first confirmation that ICC investigators were speaking to medics about possible crimes in Gaza.
One of the sources said that events surrounding the hospitals could become part of the investigation by the ICC.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie and Andrew MacAskill; editing by Alex Richardson and Mark Heinrich)
