Over the course of lengthy interviews with Zeteo and Middle East Eye, conducted amid one of the gravest international crises of the modern era, International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan has attempted to defend not only his controversial pursuit of Israeli leaders over Gaza, but the very idea that international law still applies to powerful Western backed states.
The interviews, conducted while Gaza continued to descend into catastrophe, reveal a prosecutor under extraordinary political and personal pressure. Khan spoke about arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, allegations of Western intimidation, threats from American politicians, reported surveillance by foreign intelligence services, and what he sees as a growing attempt to politically undermine both himself and the International Criminal Court at the precise moment it challenged Israeli impunity.
Taken together, the conversations paint a picture not simply of a legal battle over Gaza, but of an international system nearing collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
At the center of that crisis lies Gaza itself.
While diplomats issue statements about humanitarian concern and Western leaders continue speaking of a “rules based international order,” the Palestinian enclave has been transformed into a landscape of mass death and destruction on a scale that many international observers now openly compare to some of the darkest chapters of modern history.
Entire residential districts have been erased. Hospitals have been systematically devastated. Refugee camps have been repeatedly bombed. Families have been buried beneath apartment blocks. Aid convoys have been blocked or attacked. Starvation has spread across large parts of the territory while children die from malnutrition, dehydration, disease, and injuries that doctors no longer possess the equipment to treat.
Against this backdrop, Khan’s pursuit of Israeli leaders has become one of the most politically explosive legal actions in the history of the ICC.
“The law applies for all,” Khan repeatedly insisted during the interviews. “Nobody has a free pass.”
Those words have placed him directly in confrontation with some of the most powerful governments in the world.
The ICC warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant accuse the Israeli leadership of war crimes and crimes against humanity including extermination, starvation as a method of warfare, intentionally directing attacks against civilians, and persecution. The allegations strike at the heart of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, a campaign that human rights organizations, genocide scholars, United Nations officials, and numerous governments increasingly describe as genocidal in character.
For Palestinians, however, the existence of evidence has never been the central question.
The destruction of Gaza unfolded live before the world for months before the warrants were issued.
The question many Palestinians asked instead was why international law moved so slowly while Gaza was being destroyed in real time.
Israel imposed a near total siege almost immediately after the October 7 Hamas attacks. Electricity, fuel, water, and food access were severely restricted. Israeli officials issued increasingly extreme public statements while military operations intensified across one of the most densely populated civilian territories on earth.
Within weeks, legal scholars and genocide experts were already warning that the rhetoric and conduct of the war could amount to genocidal intent.
Yet the ICC did not seek arrest warrants until May 2024.
Khan defended the delay by arguing that prosecutors cannot simply assemble media footage into criminal cases. Evidence must be authenticated carefully enough to survive judicial scrutiny and eventual trial proceedings.
“We move at the speed of relevance,” he said.
For Palestinians trapped inside Gaza, however, relevance had already been buried beneath mountains of rubble.
By the time the warrants were announced, tens of thousands were dead. Entire family bloodlines had disappeared from civil registries. United Nations officials were warning openly about famine conditions. Doctors described children arriving at hospitals with limbs blown apart while surgeons operated without anesthetic or electricity.
The Gaza war rapidly became not merely another Middle Eastern conflict but a defining test of whether international law applies equally to allies of the West.
The political backlash against the ICC revealed the answer many critics had long suspected.
According to Khan, senior Western officials attempted to pressure him directly before the warrants were issued.
One of the most explosive revelations involved former British Prime Minister and then Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
Khan confirmed that Cameron contacted him personally in April 2024 during what he described as a “very difficult conversation.” According to Khan, Cameron warned that proceeding against Israeli leaders could create major political consequences for the court, including possible reconsideration of British support.
The implications were extraordinary.
Britain is one of the founding signatories of the Rome Statute and frequently presents itself as a defender of international law. Yet Khan’s account suggested that senior British officials attempted to discourage the court from pursuing one of its most consequential investigations.
Khan expressed visible disappointment discussing the call.
“I expected more,” he said. “If the United Kingdom stands for anything, it stands for the law.”
The pressure extended beyond Britain.
Khan also confirmed conversations with United States senators including Lindsey Graham, who allegedly told him the ICC was intended for “Africa and thugs like Putin,” not for countries like Israel or the United States.
The contradiction exposed the increasingly obvious double standards surrounding international justice.
The same Western governments and politicians who praised ICC warrants against Vladimir Putin reacted furiously when the court targeted Israeli leaders over Gaza.
Across the Global South, the hypocrisy did not go unnoticed.
For many governments, activists, and legal observers outside the Western alliance system, Gaza has become definitive proof that international law is frequently enforced selectively according to geopolitical convenience.
Khan himself acknowledged those contradictions.
“If we had consistency in international relations,” he said, “the world would not be the hell it is for so many victims and civilians.”
That inconsistency has become inseparable from the destruction unfolding in Gaza itself.
While Western governments continue supplying Israel diplomatically and militarily, the humanitarian catastrophe deepens by the day.
Entire sections of northern Gaza now resemble moonscapes. Schools, mosques, churches, universities, bakeries, water facilities, and hospitals have been destroyed or heavily damaged. Journalists have been killed in unprecedented numbers. Aid organizations repeatedly warn that starvation is being used as a weapon of war.
The International Court of Justice concluded there is a plausible case that genocide is occurring in Gaza. Numerous genocide scholars reached similar conclusions independently.
Yet the ICC warrants stopped short of charging genocide.
That omission generated enormous anger among Palestinians and many international legal experts.
Former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo publicly argued that genocide charges were warranted. Human rights organizations increasingly used the term openly. South Africa’s case against Israel at the ICJ transformed global discourse around the war.
Khan nevertheless insisted that genocide charges remain legally possible in the future.
“No crime is off limits if the evidence is there,” he said.
He argued that investigations evolve incrementally and that prosecutors must avoid rushing cases that could collapse later under judicial scrutiny.
For many Palestinians, however, such caution increasingly resembled paralysis.
The devastation in Gaza appeared so overwhelming that legal hesitation itself became politically charged.
Khan pushed back strongly against accusations that the ICC was protecting Israel. He emphasized repeatedly that war crimes and crimes against humanity are themselves among the gravest offenses under international law.
Still, the genocide debate exposed a deeper crisis surrounding the ICC itself.
Can international law genuinely function independently when enormous geopolitical interests are involved?
That question intensified dramatically when Khan became embroiled in misconduct allegations of his own.
In 2025, allegations of sexual misconduct against Khan became public, prompting a United Nations investigation and his temporary leave from office. Khan denied the allegations completely from the outset.
A panel of judges later reportedly concluded there was insufficient evidence to support findings of misconduct beyond reasonable doubt.
Khan now argues that the process against him became deeply politicized.
He described media leaks, breaches of confidentiality, and attempts to damage his reputation while the Gaza investigation was unfolding. He noted that previous ICC officials investigated internally remained anonymous, whereas his own identity became public almost immediately.
Supporters of Khan increasingly suspect that powerful actors sought to neutralize the prosecutor at the exact moment he confronted Israeli leadership.
Khan stopped short of making explicit accusations but repeatedly hinted that broader political forces were involved.
“It’s no longer about the allegations,” he said at one point. “It really is about the continuation of a process that is trespassing into areas that are much more controversial.”
The controversy surrounding Khan has therefore become inseparable from the larger battle over Gaza and international law itself.
Even more explosively, Khan confirmed that Dutch authorities informed him he may have been under surveillance by Russian and Israeli intelligence services while pursuing the Palestine investigation.
He acknowledged receiving information suggesting close monitoring by foreign intelligence agencies.
The revelation echoed earlier reports alleging that former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen attempted to pressure Khan’s predecessor Fatou Bensouda during earlier Palestine investigations.
Whether through political pressure, sanctions, surveillance, or reputational attacks, the message directed at the ICC appeared unmistakable.
Certain cases are acceptable.
Others are not.
Khan nevertheless insisted the court must continue regardless of intimidation.
“Power cannot silence law,” he declared.
That statement increasingly captures the central issue exposed by Gaza.
The war has become more than a regional conflict. It has evolved into a historic test of whether international institutions possess the courage or independence to restrain allied states with the same intensity applied to official enemies.
For decades, Western leaders promoted the concept of a rules based international order grounded in international law, human rights, and accountability.
Gaza has shattered confidence in that narrative across much of the world.
The contrast between Western responses to Ukraine and Gaza has become impossible to ignore. Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure prompted sanctions, isolation, investigations, and universal condemnation. Israel’s destruction of Gaza has instead been accompanied by continued military aid, diplomatic protection, and repeated efforts to shield Israeli officials from accountability.
Khan acknowledged that populations across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East are scrutinizing those contradictions closely.
“They are fed up of having a different yardstick,” he said.
The legitimacy crisis now extends far beyond the ICC.
International institutions themselves increasingly appear trapped between legal principles and geopolitical power.
Khan warned repeatedly that organizations such as the ICC, the ICJ, and even the United Nations are under growing attack because they obstruct the unrestricted exercise of state power.
“We need these structures,” he said. “There is a concerted attempt in some quarters to erode confidence in these institutions because they may be viewed as an impediment to power.”
Nowhere is that conflict between law and power more visible than in Gaza.
Despite provisional measures from the International Court of Justice, despite ICC warrants, despite global protests numbering in the millions, the destruction continues.
Families still search through ruins for bodies. Parents still carry starving children into collapsing hospitals. Aid workers still warn of engineered famine.
And yet Khan insists the warrants still matter.
Critics often dismiss the ICC as symbolic because the court possesses no army and no police force. Netanyahu remains free. Israeli military operations continue. The bombs have not stopped falling.
But Khan argues that symbolism itself carries power because it tells victims that their suffering has been recognized formally as criminal.
He points to past figures once considered untouchable who eventually faced justice including Charles Taylor, Slobodan Milošević, and Radovan Karadžić.
“There’s no statute of limitations for war crimes,” he said.
Whether Netanyahu or other Israeli leaders will ultimately stand trial remains uncertain.
What is already clear, however, is that Gaza has transformed international law itself into a battlefield.
The conflict no longer concerns only Israel and Palestine.
It concerns whether powerful states can continue determining which laws apply, to whom, and under what circumstances.
Near the conclusion of one interview, Khan reflected on the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Amid the destruction, he noted, one ancient oak tree survived the devastation.
For Khan, that oak tree symbolizes the law itself.
The question confronting the world now is whether international law remains a living shield capable of protecting civilians from annihilation or merely a symbolic monument standing over mass graves while governments continue speaking the language of justice even as they help destroy it.
Gaza may ultimately answer that question for the entire world.