On 15 December 2025 the International Criminal Court (ICC) Appeals Chamber rejected Israel’s appeal against the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision of November 2024. The 2024 decision had denied Israel’s request that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor give Israel a new or revised Article 18(1) Notice.
As reaffirmed by the Appeals Chamber, the Pre-Trial Chamber’s analysis and conclusion, that the Article 18(1) Notice presented to Israel by the Prosecutor’s Office in 2021 was appropriate and remained valid, was a reasonable and lawful analysis and conclusion. An Article 18(1) Notice refers to the duty of the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor to notify the existence of an investigation to states–– a step which facilitates the ability of states to either pursue domestic prosecutions or to inform the Prosecutor of the existence of domestic investigations and prosecutions.
The judgment of the Appeals Chamber confirms that the investigation opened by the Prosecutor’s Office in 2021 encompasses Rome Statute crimes committed in the Situation in the State of Palestine from at least June 2014. The judgment further confirms that the existing investigation encompasses also all crimes perpetrated since 2021, including from October 2023 up to the present, as well as future crimes in the Situation.
Now that this procedural challenge has been rejected, it is imperative that the Court be allocated all the resources, including the logistic and diplomatic support, which it requires to continue to exercise its mandate. The imperative that the Court and its staff be supported was underlined by the USA’s reprisal action of 18 December 2025, where designated with sanctions ICC Judge Gocha Lordkipanidze (Georgia) and Judge Erdenebalsuren Damdin (Mongolia), each of whom are judges of the Appeals Chamber in this judgment, as ‘judges directly engaged in the illegitimate targeting of Israel’.
1. Israel’s Failed Article 18 Challenge
Article 18(1) of the Rome Statute requires that the Office of the Prosecutor notify the existence of an investigation to all States Parties, and to those States which would normally exercise jurisdiction over the crimes concerned. The Office of the Prosecutor, following its announcement of the initiation of an investigation in the Situation in Palestine with respect to ‘crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court that are alleged to have been committed in the Situation since 13 June 2014’, issued such a Notification to Israel on 9 March 2021.
Subsequent to the Office’s indication on 20 May 2024 that it would be seeking the authorisation of warrants of arrest against Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu and former Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity, Israel moved to challenge the adequacy of the 2021 Article 18 Notification on several grounds.
While having initially rejected Israel’s challenge to the Article 18(1) Notice in November 2024, in May 2025 the Pre-Trial Chamber granted Israel’s request for leave to appeal. The specific issue for appeal was whether the Pre-Trial Chamber had erred in finding that no new situation had arisen, and that no substantial change had occurred in the parameters of the investigation into the situation, following 7 October 2023.
On 15 December 2025 the Appeals Chamber concluded that the Pre-Trial Chamber had not erred in this regard, and rejected Israel’s challenge under Article 18(1).
2. The Courts Reasoning on Article 18(1)
In the first instance the Appeals Chamber held that the Pre-Trial Chamber had not erred when finding that the Prosecutor’s post-7 October 2023 investigation falls within the scope of the pre-existing investigation, on the basis that it concerns the ‘same type of armed conflicts’ and ‘same alleged parties to these conflicts’. Israel had argued that neither the 2018 Referral nor the Article 18(1) Notification refers to or describes any “armed conflict”, a claim rejected by the Appeals Chamber which noted that:
When read together and when considered against the applicable legal framework, it is clear that these documents concern crimes and conduct that, in legal terms, can only be committed in an international armed conflict (whether or not in the form of an occupation) or non-international armed conflict.’ (55)
Israel’s argument that neither the 2018 Referral nor the Article 18(1) Notification refers to or describes any “armed conflict” must be rejected, as it is based on an overly narrow reading of these documents in disregard of the need to assess them in keeping with the Court’s legal framework.
Second, the Appeals Chamber rejected Israel’s assertion that the Pre-Trial Chamber ‘erred in failing to find, and giving no reasons to reject, Israel’s submission that a new Situation was triggered by referrals following 7 October 2023’. Here the Chamber affirmed the opposite of Israel’s contention, noting that:
Instead of identifying a new situation, the two referrals were submitted with a view to urging the Prosecutor to advance the investigation in respect of the alleged crimes committed before 7 October 2023, as well as those committed on and after that date, as forming part of a single situation arising from the 2018 Referral.
Israel’s ‘submission that the 2018 Referral limits the situation of crisis to a “settlement policy” (or related designations) is supported neither by the terms of the 2018 Referral nor by the applicable legal framework. The 2018 Referral explicitly states that “[t]his settlement policy has been carried out through the commission of multiple crimes within the Court’s jurisdiction”, and that acts associated with such a policy “qualify under the Rome Statute as both war crimes and crimes against humanity”. (56)
Third, the Chamber notes that alleged crimes perpetrated in the Situation in the State of Palestine subsequent to October 2023 ‘display a continuity in pattern’ and stressed that ‘Israel’s argument under this ground of appeal disregards the Prosecutor’s prerogative to investigate matters occurring after the commencement of the investigation and the provision of information to States in accordance with article 18(1) of the Statute’:
the Majority is not persuaded by Israel’s submission that the general circumstances in which the alleged criminality is said to have occurred have changed radically. Rather, as is apparent from the foregoing considerations, the currently investigated circumstances appear to be connected to the circumstances identified in the 2018 Referral and the Article 18(1) Notification in view of the continuity of the context in which the alleged crimes have been perpetrated. In this regard, the Majority recalls that, as set out above under the first ground of appeal, the Pre-Trial Chamber correctly held that, in comparison with the Article 18(1) Notification, the Prosecutor “alleges conduct committed in the context of the same type of armed conflicts, concerning the same territories, with the same alleged parties to these conflicts” in the applications for the warrants of arrest. Therefore, the alleged crimes display a continuity in pattern, even though a certain shift in circumstances may have occurred as a result of the events on and after 7 October 2023. Similarly, as determined in the preceding paragraphs, there continue to be allegations of crimes committed systematically and/or as a matter of State policy.’ (132)
3. Summary
In summary, the Appeals Chamber has affirmed the Pre-Trial Chamber’s initial conclusion, i.e., that the Office of the Prosecutor’s Article 18 Notice of 2021 was appropriate and remains valid. The Appeals Chamber judgment is significant in that it dismantles a core Israeli claim, namely, that Israel’s conduct in occupied Palestinian territory since 7 October 2023 is to be conceptualised as existing in a factual and legal context utterly distinct from pre-October 2023. Israel’s initial challenge to the validity of the Article 18 Notification sought to characterise as markedly different pre- and post-October 2023 events, by claiming that ‘The “situation of crisis” that has arisen since 7 October 2023 is fundamentally different from that described in the Palestinian Referral in 2018’ (21), insofar as the Referral related only to ‘crimes allegedly committed in relation to Israel’s “settlement” policies, and other alleged policies of occupation’.
As with Israel’s fragmentation of the Palestinian people by way of their forced physical separation into distinct legal domains, in contravention of their right to self-determination, so the present appeal had sought to fragment the Court’s investigation into categories – temporal and judicial – of Israel’s choosing. The judgment illustrates how Israel’s efforts at fragmenting Palestinians, and Israel’s efforts at taking control of the narrative to dominate official discussion and analysis of the occupation, and of rights and duties owed, are reduced to incoherence when made subject to the application of the Rome Statute and the framework of public international law in which the ICC is located.
The Appeals Chamber for example observes how Israel’s ‘submission that the 2018 Referral limits the situation of crisis to a “settlement policy” (or related designations) is supported neither by the terms of the 2018 Referral nor by the applicable legal framework’, (56) and affirms, having had regard to the initial referral of the situation by Palestine in 2018, and the subsequent referrals by concerned states parties in 2023 and 2024, that there is a ‘continuity of the context in which the alleged crimes have been perpetrated’ both prior to and subsequent to October 2023.
4. Next Steps
In the wake of the Appeal Chamber’s 15 December 2025 judgment, Netanyahu accused the ICC of engaging in ‘a politically motivated attempt to criminalize the Jewish state’. Days previously the United States reportedly declared that the ICC itself, and additional Court staff, could be subject to U.S. sanctions should the Court not drop investigations in the Situation in the State of Palestine. Making good on its threat, on 18 December 2025, the United States designated ICC Judge Gocha Lordkipanidze (Georgia) and Judge Erdenebalsuren Damdin (Mongolia) on the U.S. sanctions list warning that:
These individuals have directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel’s consent, including voting with the majority in favor of the ICC’s ruling against Israel’s appeal on December 15.
The conduct of the United States, which in September 2025 also sanctioned Palestinian civil society organisations, including Al-Haq, in seeking to protect and facilitate Israel’s impunity, is visibly directed at the undermining and destruction of the framework of international law. The 15 December judgment of the ICC Appeals Chamber evidences that when afforded a ‘fair trial’ and the ability to present its legal analysis and rationale, Israel cannot justify its inherently unlawful conduct.
In light of the ongoing unlawful occupation, and the continuing genocidal conduct of Israel, it is vital that the ICC be protected from the ongoing and escalating US assault. The Assembly of States Parties, the United Nations, and regional organisations, as well as civil society and the global public must strive to ensure that every possible step is taken to ensure that the Court’s independence is respected, its staff are protected, and its mandate to ensure accountability for the perpetration of international crimes is enforced. In particular, the European Commission should implement the EU Blocking Statute.
The next steps before the Pre-Trial Chamber relate to an ongoing parallel Article 19 challenge, which we now await. On 21 November 2024 Pre-Trial Chamber 1 issued warrants of arrest for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024, the day the Prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest. In April 2025 the ICC Appeals Chamber held that in considering Israel’s challenge under Article 19, the Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision of November 2024 had insufficiently addressed Israel’s central contention that Article 19(2)(c) of the Rome Statute permits it to challenge the jurisdiction of the Court. This specific matter was remanded to the Pre-Trial Chamber for it to rule on the substance of the jurisdictional challenge–– a ruling which has yet to materialise.