Hamas and Israeli leaders may face international arrest warrants. Here’s what that means Anchorage

Both Hamas and Israeli politicians denounced the ICC’s move.   Hamas said it was an attempt to “equate victims with aggressors by issuing arrest warrants against a number of Palestinian resistance leaders without legal basis.” The militant group said warrant requests for Netanyahu and Gallant had come “seven months late,” referring to the duration of Israel’s war in Gaza.   Israeli politicians across the political spectrum condemned the decision. Foreign Minister Israel Katz called it a “scandalous decision” and an “unrestrained frontal attack on the victims of October 7 and our 128 hostages in Gaza.”   The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, called it “a complete moral failure” and said Israel “cannot accept the outrageous comparison between Netanyahu and Sinwar.”   The right-wing minister for National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir, accused the ICC of antisemitism and called for an escalation of attacks against Hamas, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said: “We have not seen such a show of hypocrisy and hatred of Jews as that of the Hague Tribunal since Nazi propaganda.”   CNN has reached out to the Prime Minister’s office and Defense Ministry.   In the US, meanwhile, President Joe Biden has denounced the ICC prosecutor’s move, calling it “outrageous.”   “Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” the president wrote. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”   Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US “fundamentally rejects” the ICC prosecutor’s announcement and warned it could “jeopardize” efforts to reach a ceasefire and hostage release agreement.   “We reject the prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans,” Blinken said in a statement.   He questioned “the legitimacy and credibility of this investigation,” and said the US believed the ICC to have “no jurisdiction over this matter.”

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