Israel petitioned the International Criminal Court on Monday to remove chief prosecutor Karim Khan from its case, saying he pursued charges against Israeli leaders to distract from sexual harassment accusations lodged against him.

Israel also asked the court to cancel its arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over Khan’s allegations that they perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare” and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.”

The petition came after two women submitted complaints against Khan for workplace sexual misconduct. One is an ICC employee, who alleged the misconduct occurred as recently as 2024 and that Khan attempted to dissuade her from making claims against him.

In a leaked recording of a phone call between Khan and the ICC employee, she lamented that she had been accused of being a “Mossad plant” over the complaint. Khan was recorded telling the woman that someone had leaked the complaint to the media to “get rid of the warrants for Palestine,” among other open cases.

According to The Guardian, private investigators hired by Qatar had attempted and failed to find a link between the accuser and Israel.

Khan went on leave in May, while the ICC conducted an internal investigation into the allegations against him.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that the reports “raise serious concerns that the prosecutor acted with inappropriate personal motivations to advance false and baseless allegations against Israel to distract public attention from the serious accusations against him.”

The Foreign Ministry also clarified that it continues to maintain that the warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant are void and that the court did not have the authority to issue them.

Elliot Malin, an international lawyer who has filed petitions to the ICC, including against Iran for abetting Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, evaluated Israel’s chance of success in its petition to be “50-50.”

Sources in the ICC “thought the request for warrants [against Netanyahu and Galant] were premature,” Malin told Jewish Insider. “When Khan requested a warrant for the crime of extermination, it was rejected. … Extermination is a lower-threshold crime than genocide, and the threshold to grant warrants is extremely low. You only have to present that you might have a case, so the fact that judges reject it is noteworthy.”

At the same time, Malin said that the warrant for intentional starvation was “based on hearsay,” so it seems the decision may have been “political, because they rejected a lot [of other charges], saying that Khan didn’t show evidence that demonstrates those crimes.” 

“If the court wants to do its best to appear objective, it’s in its interest” to remove Khan, Malin added.