Qatar has rejected reports by The Wall Street Journal which claimed that it had offered to protect the Chief Prosecutor of the International Court, Karim Khan, after he issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.
“Recent attempts to implicate Qatar in improper discussions with officials of the International Criminal Court – purportedly regarding potential arrest warrants for Israeli officials – are categorically false,” Qatar’s International Media Office said in a statement issued last Wednesday.
“These false accusations and fabricated claims were made by Israeli officials who have consistently spread misleading information about the State of Qatar through selective leaks to serve their personal interests,” it added.
“These claims have been repeatedly debunked and have always been proven false.” The media office went on to accuse the Israeli officials of “striving, at any cost, to evade legal accountability at both the domestic and international levels for past violations of international law that are still ongoing”.
It said that Qatar “is not their only target; these officials have long been known to conduct covert campaigns involving the promotion of fabricated documents, audio recordings, and video clips to achieve hidden agendas and premeditated intentions.” The Wall Street Journal claimed in an article published on Tuesday that the Qatari government had pledged to “look after” ICC prosecutor Khan on condition that he pursue legal action against Netanyahu, citing what it described as testimony from a new witness submitted to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and reviewed by several members of Congress.
Qatar is among the countries that have not joined the Rome Statute of ICC, the treaty that established the court.
On November 21, 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant on charges of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war in Gaza.
Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has utterly devastated the territory and displaced most of its population, while killing over 72,000 people, most of them women and children. Israel continues to launch deadly strikes on the territory, despite a ceasefire theoretically in place since October 2025.
Israel’s far-right government has waged a campaign against Qatar, which has played a key mediating role, throughout the war on Gaza, accusing it of supporting Hamas. Doha has denied the accusations, saying that its relationship with Hamas as a mediator was known to all parties, including the US. On September 9 last year Israel launched an airstrike on Doha, targeting a meeting of the Hamas leadership engaged in discussions of ceasefire proposals.
Recently ICC prosecutor Karim Khan told journalist Mehdi Hasan that he had faced pressure and threats after issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, including from former British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and US Senator Lindsey Graham.
In April 2024, Cameron telephoned Khan and threatened that the UK would withdraw from and defund the ICC if it continued to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli officials.
After facing allegations of sexual misconduct, Khan has not been restored to his duties as chief prosecutor despite a UN investigation concluding that he had not engaged in any “misconduct or breach of duty”, with western countries continuing to block his reinstatement.