Palestinians in Gaza outraged over ICC request to arrest Hamas leaders

Palestinians in besieged Gaza have expressed frustration and anger about the International Criminal Court's [ICC] request to arrest three Hamas leaders.

"My opinion about the ICC decision is that they've equated the victim with the executioner, they made victim and executioner equal. The criminal Netanyahu and Gantz who have killed the people of Palestine, [equal to] the ones who have [the Palestinians] resisted and demanded their rights," said Yasser al Satari in Rafah on Monday.

"The homeland is our right and we must demand our right. If [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar and [Ismail] Haniyeh... generations will not stop demanding their rights. How can it be that those who resist and call for the liberation of their homeland become criminal? And the criminal become the protector?!"

Displaced Palestinian Mohammad Abdel of Nuseirat camp said those who are defending their land cannot be considered war criminals.

"Those who should be punished are America and Israel. Israel occupied us in '48. So if someone comes into my house, am I not to defend myself? I am supposed to defend myself with all resources God created in this world — with weapons, with peace - I should take what is mine," he said.

"The ICC is aligned with the occupation and aligned with America."

The ordinary Palestinians were reacting to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan's request to the court to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence chief Yoav Gallant, and also for three Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

October 7 blitz

In a statement issued after over seven months of war in Gaza, Khan said he had reasonable grounds to believe that the five men "bear criminal responsibility" for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Hamas leaders are chief Yahya Sinwar; Mohammed Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of the military wing of Hamas who is widely known as Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas' Political Bureau.

The Hamas leaders face allegations of bearing responsibility for alleged crimes during its October 7 blitz on Israeli military and settlements that were once Arab villages and farms.

Hamas says its raid that surprised its arch-enemy was orchestrated in response to daily Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque, illegal settler violence in occupied West Bank and to put Palestine question "back on the table."

In an assault of startling breadth, Hamas fighters rolled into as many as 22 locations outside Gaza, including towns and other communities as far as 24 kilometres from the Gaza fence.

In some places they are said to have gunned down many soldiers as Israel's military scrambled to muster response. The hours-long attack and Israeli military's haphazard response resulted in the killing of more than 1,130 people, a number that Israeli officials and local media revised down from previously stated 1,400 people.

Palestinian fighters took more than 250 hostages and presently 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who the Israeli army says are dead, some of them killed in indiscriminate Israeli strikes.

'Hamas in Gaza is a resistance'

If granted by the ICC judges, the warrants would mean that technically any of the 124 ICC member states would be obliged to arrest Netanyahu and the others if they travelled there, but the court has no mechanism to enforce its warrants.

Israel and its top ally the United States similarly rejected the ICC bid, with President Joe Biden denouncing it as "outrageous".

Palestinians in Gaza, who have seen Israel kill at least 35,562 people — majority of them babies, children and women — and wound over 79,652 in its 227-day war on the besieged enclave, say they will continue their resistance against Israeli occupation.

"Hamas in Gaza is a resistance. The resistance will never give up its land," displaced Palestinian Mahmour Al-Salhi said.

"Secondly, our land is occupied – we can't just leave it like that. It's our right to defend it [land] and no matter what happens, no matter how many of us they kill, no matter how many martyrs, we wont leave the land and go, it remains our land."