For the same reason they didn't issue a warrant against the Israel government over the past twenty years: the conflict spiraled out of control months ago.
In 2019, the ICC got involved following the 2014 Gaza war and concluded that war crimes were taking place (on both sides, in different ways), but they concluded that they lacked jurisdiction. Investigations has been ongoing ever since.
You're not wrong, but the world is imperfect and they're forced into this weird role of being both a political institution and an "international court" which, as constructs go, doesn't make a lot of sense.
Short of going full "one world government" or the next best thing, "team america world police" you can't really violate state sovereignty even if someone is doing atrocities so instead you need to convince key players or a critical mass that something should be done. If successful, you can then tighten the screws on that person as fast as you can get all the relevant bureaucracies moving.
By combing these warrants into a single press release they've completely lost any legitimacy.
There were no "screws needed" to issue an arrest warrant against Hamas months ago. Yet they didn't.
They should have issued arrest warrants years ago against Hamas for deliberately firing into civilian territory. It's an easy case to make, no one at all claims Hamas didn't do that.
But, nope, they did not issue any warrant.
No, they only issued a warrant against Hamas to pretend like they have some balance in trying to issue a warrant against Netanyahu.
It's no longer Netanyahu on trial, it's actually now ICC that is on trial. If the ICC actually grants the warrant against Netanyahu they have proven themselves to be a bunch of clowns with no legitimacy.
Yeah, again, you're not wrong. While I'd maybe call that position a bit idealistic, it is really weird that they didn't go after various people earlier. That said, they don't have their own carrier strike group so they have to generate international cooperation. The US is already kinda iffy on the ICC's existence because they've called out our war criminals before and, for reasons I don't fully understand, that's a problem. The whole thing is very...contrived I guess?
The fact that it didn't tell you all you need to know about how legitimate this "court" is.