THE HAGUE (Reuters) — International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan has defended his decision to bring war crimes allegations against Israel’s prime minister, saying Israel had made “no real effort” to investigate the allegations itself.

In an interview with Reuters, he stood by his decision over the arrest warrant despite a vote last week by the US House of Representatives to sanction the ICC in protest, a move he described as “unwanted and unwelcome.”

ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Muhammad Deif last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict (Israel says Deif was killed during the war, but Hamas has not confirmed this).

The Prime Minister’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Khan’s remarks to Reuters.

Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes. The United States, Israel’s main ally, is also not a member of the ICC and Washington has criticized the arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

“We’re here as a court of last resort and …as we speak right now, we haven’t seen any real effort by the State of Israel to take action that would meet the established jurisprudence, which is investigations regarding the same suspects for the same conduct,” Khan told Reuters.

“That can change and I hope it does,” he said in Thursday’s interview, a day after Israel and Hamas reached a deal for a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza.

An Israeli investigation could have led to the case being handed back to Israeli courts under so-called complementary principles. Israel can still demonstrate its willingness to investigate, even after warrants were issued, he said.

But Jerusalem is highly unlikely to launch war crimes probes into Netanyahu or Gallant.

The ICC, with 125 member states, is the world’s permanent court to prosecute individuals for alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and aggression.

Khan said that Israel had very good legal expertise.

But he said “The question is have those judges, have those prosecutors, have those legal instruments been used to properly scrutinize the allegations that we’ve seen in the occupied Palestinian territories, in the State of Palestine? And I think the answer to that was ‘no.'”

Passage of the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” by the US House of Representatives on Jan. 9 underscored strong support for Israel’s government among President-elect Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans.

The ICC said it noted the bill with concern and warned it could rob victims of atrocities of justice and hope.

Trump’s first administration imposed sanctions on the ICC in 2020 over investigations into war crimes in Afghanistan, including allegations of torture by US citizens. Those sanctions were lifted during Joe Biden’s presidency.

Five years ago, then-ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and other staff had credit cards and bank accounts frozen and US travel impeded. Any further US sanctions under Trump would be widely expected to be more severe and widespread.

The ICC, created in 1998, was intended to assume the work of temporary tribunals that have conducted war crimes trials based on legal principles established during the Nuremberg trials against the Nazis after World War II.

“It is of course unwanted and unwelcome that an institution that is a child of Nuremberg …is threatened with sanctions. It should make people take note because this court is not owned by the prosecutor or by judges. We have 125 states,” Khan said.

It “is a matter that should make all people of conscience be concerned,” he said, declining to discuss further what sanctions could mean for the court.

Netanyahu has called the arrest warrants “a black day in the history of nations” and vowed to fight the allegations. Individuals cannot contest an arrest warrant directly, but the State of Israel can object to the entire investigation. Israel argued in a December filing that there were serious procedural deficiencies in the decision by Khan to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

In two appeals, it firstly addressed Israel’s contention that Khan should have provided new notification of his investigation into the allegations regarding the prosecution of the war in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre that started the war. He instead relied on a notification issued in 2021 of an investigation the court had initiated at the time.

The second appeal dealt with Israel’s claim that the ICC lacks jurisdiction over Israelis, that Jerusalem could look into allegations against its leaders on its own, and that continuing to investigate Israelis was a violation of state sovereignty.

In Khan’s combined 55-page response, he said the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the ICC, allowed it to prosecute crimes that take place in the territory of member states, regardless of where the perpetrators hail from. Gaza, as part of a state of Palestine, is a member state.

The judges are expected to render a decision in the coming months.

The allegations against Netanyahu and Gallant related in particular to charges that the two leaders had committed the war crimes of directing attacks against the civilian population of Gaza and of using starvation as a method of warfare by hindering the supply of international aid to Gaza.

Khan also alleged that the two committed crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts as a result of the restrictions they allegedly placed on the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israel has strongly rejected the substance of the allegations, insisting that it has funneled massive amounts of humanitarian aid through the crossings along the Gaza border and that any problems with the distribution of that aid to the Palestinian civilian population were a result of inefficient operations by the aid organizations on the ground, difficulties arising from the ongoing conflict in the territory, and the looting of aid by Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

Israel has also rejected allegations that it targets civilians, insisting that civilian casualties caused by the operation have resulted in large part due to Hamas’s tactic of embedding its fighters and installations within Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.

The ICC has said its decision to pursue warrants against the Israeli officials was in line with its approach in all cases, based on an assessment by the prosecutor that there was enough evidence to proceed, and the view that seeking arrest warrants immediately could prevent ongoing crimes.

The ICC also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas military chief Deif, who Israel says was killed by an IDF strike in Gaza back in July. While Khan had initially sought arrest warrants for Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar as well, the two were killed before the warrants were issued in November.