After years of moving at a snail’s pace, new events regarding Israel and the International Criminal Court have been moving at a dizzying pace lately.

On April 24, the ICC’s Appeals Chamber gave Israel a pleasant surprise when it stalled the prosecution’s progress against Israelis by saying that its lower court needed to review Jerusalem’s objections to the ICC’s jurisdiction more carefully.

But that was far from the end of the story.

Israel tried to use this win before the ICC’s Appeals Chamber to get that same court to freeze the arrest warrants which the ICC’s lower court had approved against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024.

In the middle of all of this, over May 17-18, the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, took indefinite leave from his position due to unrelated allegations of sexual assault committed by him against an ICC employee.

In his absence, instead of the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties appointing a single acting chief prosecutor, it confusingly appointed both his deputies to run the office.

These deputies, Mame Mandiaye Niang (Senegal) and Nazhat Shameem Khan (Fiji), have consistently divided their roles between criminal investigations and the later stages of prosecution.

When the ICC’s prosecution filed its brief to fight back against Israel on May 21, Shameem Khan signed the papers over Karim Khan’s printed signature, potentially signaling that she will run the case until his return.

One perplexing aspect of Shameem Khan’s role in all of this is that she comes from Fiji, which has an awful human rights record.

In fact, Shameem Khan, according to local coverage of Fiji developments, was fired from the country’s High Court in a dispute over political coups.

She was then out of public service for several years until she was called back to serve on the UN Human Rights Council and subsequently the ICC office.

Without getting deeply into which side Shameem Khan was on, the point is that she is no stranger to politics mixing in with law, and comes from a country with a problematic version of democracy, all of which raises questions about how she will understand Israel’s complex context vs the Palestinians’ one.

In any event, her signing on to continuing the Netanyahu and Gallant arrest warrants seems to suggest that even Khan’s extended leave from his position (which could turn into him being fired) will not free Israel from the ICC’s ongoing scrutiny.

Will new charges be filed by Khan's deputies?

One question is whether Khan’s deputies will file new charges against Israelis, or whether, given their lesser authority, they will stick to only maintaining the existing probe against Netanyahu and Gallant.

For example, The Wall Street Journal has reported that right around when Khan decided to step aside, he was seriously considering going after Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

He was going to do so for these ministers’ support of the settlement enterprise as well as their alleged support of Jewish extremists’ violence against innocent West Bank Palestinians, such as in Huwara and Jit.

Back in May 2024, there were even reports that some ICC officials wanted Khan to pursue Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and the settlement enterprise first, before he decided to target Netanyahu and Gallant in relation to the current Israel-Hamas War.

The strategy for targeting Smotrich and Ben-Gvir initially was that there was a greater global consensus against those officials and the settlement enterprise at that point. In contrast, many prominent countries came to the defense of Netanyahu and Gallant.

But because the deputies do not have the same standing as Khan and given that the Trump administration’s sanctions are deeply harming the ICC’s operations, including around half a dozen staff members leaving to avoid sanctions, Shameem Khan may avoid adding new charges against Israelis at this moment.

For the time being, both the ICC’s prosecution and Israel have their hands full with fighting another round over whether the ICC has jurisdiction over Israelis.

The prosecution and the “State of Palestine” must file their updates by June 27, while Israel can file its response by July 11.

Unlike prior rounds of debate on these issues, the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber will try to reach a decision within several months at most, and will not let the issue drag out over a year or more.