The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, is impatient, eager to start arresting elected Israeli leaders. Will Jerusalem government officials be helped by their country’s judicial system before that can happen? 

This week Mr. Khan renewed his request, first made in May, for the Hague-based court’s judges to issue global arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant. He accuses them, along with three Hamas leaders, of committing crimes against humanity and war crimes. 

In renewing his push, Mr. Khan alleges that there has been “ongoing criminality” in Gaza since he issued his first arrest requests, and cited a “worsening situation in Palestine.” 

Yet, unlike with President Putin, against whom the Hague judges issued an arrest warrant four days after Mr. Khan requested it, there is much international pressure to deny the current request.

“Profoundly wrong-headed” is how Secretary Blinken described the arrest warrant request during a Senate hearing — though the Biden administration is yet to act on congressional requests to impose sanctions on ICC officials.

In May, Mr. Khan sought the arrests of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, its Gaza military commander, Mohammed Deif, and the Gaza chief, Yehyah Sinwar. Haniyeh’s name is no longer on the list, as he was killed at Tehran. Mr. Khan says he needs additional information before crossing out Deif’s name, even though he was killed in Gaza. 

Mr. Sinwar is believed to only rarely, if at all, venture out of Gaza tunnels, where he is reportedly surrounded by October 7 hostages. A top Israeli hostage negotiator, Gal Hirsch, told Bloomberg this week that Mr. Sinwar rejected an offer of free passage out of the Strip in exchange for freeing the hostages.

While these terrorists are unlikely to be arrested, Mr. Netanyahu already had to cancel stops in two European countries, citing concerns related to potential ICC arrest warrants. Mr. Khan’s comparison of the “war criminal Sinwar” with Israel’s prime and defense ministers and “is antisemitism for its own sake and moral disgrace of the first order,” Mr. Netanyahu’s office said in a statement this week. 

The prosecutor, though, seems to be taunting the Israeli leaders he seeks to arrest. His “advantage” over Messrs. Netanyahu and Gallant, he told the BBC this week, is that “even they will concede that I have seen the evidence,” while they haven’t. ”So they are guessing what evidence has been submitted.” 

To blunt the ICC warrant, Mr. Netanyahu asked Israel’s attorney general, Gali Baharav-Miara, to launch an investigation against him and Mr. Gallant on war crime allegations, Channel 12 reported this week.

“According to the ICC rules, if there is a legitimate investigation in the state where the problem arises, then they don’t investigate; they only investigate where there is no such investigation,” a veteran international law professor, Malvina Halberstam, tells the Sun.   

Yet, Ms. Baharav-Miara has declined to cooperate with Mr. Netanyahu’s request. She is urging the establishment of an official state commission of inquiry to investigate Israel’s military and governmental failures on October 7. Mr. Netanyahu suspects that political rivals who are demanding such an inquiry aim to use it to unseat him.

While Mr. Netanyahu argues that a wide-ranging investigation would harm the war efforts, Ms. Baharav-Miara counters that only a state-authorized committee would be sufficient. The prime minister’s requested investigation, she reportedly told him, is unlikely to be considered legitimate by the ICC. “The investigated cannot appoint the investigator,” she reportedly said.

Yet, even if the ICC had jurisdiction over a state that is not one of its members — a questionable proposition — Mr. Khan seems to be violating judicial principles he claims to uphold. In the arrest warrant requests, he is making “false” statements about Messrs. Netanyahu and Gallant, a British non-governmental organization, UK Lawyers for Israel, alleged this week.

The legal advocacy group filed a complaint with the ICC against Mr. Khan, who is a British national, as well as with Britain’s Bar Standards Board. When Mr. Khan announced the initial arrest request on May 20, he made a statement that included the allegation that Israeli leaders are using famine as a war tool in Gaza. 

Israel has long facilitated food deliveries to the Strip, yet Mr. Khan ignored this and urged the ICC judges to disregard any evidence that emerged after his May statement. “Every phrase of every sentence” in Mr. Khan’s initial statement “is untrue,” the group said.

The ICC judges, though, could be swayed by growing anti-Israel sentiments around the world. Britain initially planned to lean on Mr. Khan to drop the arrest warrants. Yet, after the Labour Party won an election, London dropped the appeal. The new foreign minister, David Lammy, said Britain would comply with an ICC arrest warrant. 

If a warrant is issued, it could curtail Mr. Netanayhu’s ability to travel. It could also open the door for the Hague to prosecute Washington officials as well, even though America, like Israel, is not an ICC member.