The International Criminal Court prosecutor is considering issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Al Jazeera reported quoting Israel’s Channel 12.
The report said that Israeli government had received indications from senior legal officials regarding the arrest warrants.
The ICC is currently investigating Israel’s actions in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
In addition to Netanyahu, these investigations could lead to arrest warrants being issued for Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, the report added.
The Israeli newspaper Maariv also reported that Netanyahu is “frightened and unusually stressed” by the possibility of an ICC arrest warrant.
Meanwhile, at least 27 Palestinians, including women and children, were killed in Israeli airstrikes Sunday night in Rafah and Gaza City, Al Jazeera reported.
Israeli airstrikes on three houses in the southern Gaza city of Rafah killed 13 people and wounded many others, medics said on Monday.
Gaza media outlets put the death toll at 15. While Al-Jazeera correspondents included five more deaths “from the attack on the al-Khawajat family home” which took the death toll to 20.
In Gaza City, in the north of the strip, Israeli planes struck two houses, killing and wounding several people, health officials said. Several of them later succumbed to their critical wounds.
The strikes on Rafah, where over a million people are sheltering from months of Israeli bombardment, came hours before Egypt was expected to host leaders of the fighter group Hamas to discuss prospects for a ceasefire agreement with Israel.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron has said that Hamas has been offered a 40-day ceasefire and the release of “potentially thousands” of Palestinian prisoners in return for freeing Israeli hostages.
The Palestinian group has been given “a very generous offer of [a] sustained 40 days ceasefire, the release of potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners, in return for the release of these hostages”, Cameron told a World Economic Forum meeting in Riyadh.—Agencies
