Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, visited Israel over the weekend at the request of families of hostages held by Hamas, the first trip to the country by an ICC chief prosecutor.
Khan toured some of the communities attacked during the October 7 Hamas onslaught, including Kibbutz Be’eri and Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and heard testimonies from survivors of the massacre.
״I would be completely incompetent if I don’t check the instances of children being kidnapped from their beds and Holocaust survivors being taken into captivity,” Khan told Haaretz.
Khan also said that international crimes were likely committed. “These were not random murders. People were murdered because of their identity.”
Regarding the families who invited him, Khan said they “expect not just empathy, but action.”
Hamas’s October 7 massacre saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing some 240 hostages of all ages under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities. The vast majority of those killed as gunmen seized border communities were civilians — including babies, children and the elderly. Entire families were executed in their homes, and over 360 were slaughtered at an outdoor festival, many amid horrific acts of brutality by the terrorists.
Khan said that he would like to cooperate with both Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding any future investigation, though he stressed that such cooperation is not necessary to carry out an inquiry.
Despite not being a member of the ICC and denying the institution’s jurisdiction over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel decided to respect the hostage families’ request to have Khan make an unofficial visit. Nevertheless, the trip does not constitute a change in Israel’s policy toward the ICC, possibly due to fears that an investigation of the October 7 atrocities will draw more inquiries into Israeli actions against Palestinians. While Israel is not a member of the ICC, if warrants are issued certain citizens could be subject to arrest while traveling abroad.
Last month, families of nine Israeli victims of the October 7 Hamas massacre lodged a complaint at the ICC for suspected war crimes and genocide. Any individual or group can bring a case to the ICC, which is located in The Hague in the Netherlands, but it is up to the court’s prosecutor to launch an investigation.
During his visit, Khan also met with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, also the first such trip made by an ICC chief prosecutor, in which possible Israeli violations of international law were discussed.
The prosecutor said his office was looking into claims of settler violence in the West Bank as well as possible war crimes committed by Israel in Gaza since war broke out on October 7.
“The laws of war must be complied with,” Khan told Haaretz. “The law can’t be interpreted in such a way that women and children have no protection.”
Palestinian human rights groups refused to meet with Khan over the weekend, claiming the prosecutor has favored Israeli claims of human rights abuses since October 7.
“As Palestinian human rights organizations, we decided not to meet him,” Ammar Dwaik, director general of the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR), told Reuters.
“I think the way this visit has been handled shows that Mr. Khan is not handling his work in an independent and professional manner,” he added.
In 2019, the ICC announced that it would be launching a probe into alleged war crimes committed by both sides during the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict, Israeli settlement policy and the Israeli response to protests at the Gaza border. The probe was formally opened on March 3, 2021, and was met with strong criticism from Israel.