Jerusalem, Israel:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that an arrest warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court for his conduct of the war in Gaza would not prevent him from defending Israel.

“No outrageous anti-Israeli decision will prevent us – and it will not prevent me – from continuing to defend our country by all means,” Netanyahu said in a video statement. “We will not give in to pressure,” he promised.

The prime minister is accused, alongside his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, of “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

He called Thursday’s decision a “dark day in the history of nations.”

“The International Criminal Court in The Hague, which was established to protect humanity, has today become the enemy of humanity,” he said, adding that the accusations were “totally unfounded.”

Israel has been fighting in Gaza since October 2023, when a cross-border attack carried out by Hamas militants left 1,206 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.

Its campaign of retaliation has led to the deaths of 44,056 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-controlled territory’s Health Ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.

UN agencies have warned of a serious humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including possible famine, due to lack of food and medicine.

The court said it found “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant bore “criminal responsibility” for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, as well as the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts.

Netanyahu said the court was accusing Israel of “fictitious crimes” while ignoring “the real war crimes, the horrible war crimes committed against us and many others around the world.”

In addition to Netanyahu and Gallant, the court also issued an arrest warrant for the head of Hamas’ military wing, Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed in an airstrike last July.

Hamas has never confirmed his death.

Netanyahu mocked the court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for “the body of Mohammed Deif.”

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