Some in EU vow to uphold the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant
Republicans in US Congress threaten to sanction international court, as human rights NGOs welcome PM’s new status as ‘officially a wanted man’
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In the hours after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday, European officials said they were prepared to obey the decision. American lawmakers panned it, calling to sanction the court instead.
The decision to issue the warrants, granted unanimously on charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes during Israel’s campaign against the Hamas terror group in Gaza, marked the first time the ICC has ever issued arrest warrants against leaders of a democratic country.
Both Netanyahu and Gallant will be liable for arrest if they travel to any of the more than 120 countries that are party to the ICC. The court also issued an arrest warrant for slain Hamas military leader Mohammad Deif, noting it could not confirm his death.
The EU’s outgoing foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Thursday that the decision was not a political one but made by a court and thus should be respected and implemented, writing on X, “These decisions are binding on all States party to the Rome Statute, which includes all EU Member States.”
The Netherlands’ foreign minister Caspar Veldkamp said his country was prepared to act upon the warrants, Dutch news agency ANP reported. Veldkamp was expected to visit Israel on Friday.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris, in a statement, said that “Ireland respects the role of the International Criminal Court. Anyone in a position to assist it in carrying out its vital work must now do so with urgency.”
Harris’s statement also called for “an immediate ceasefire, release of all hostages, and unhindered access for humanitarian aid in Gaza,” calling the situation in the enclave “an affront to humanity.”
France’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Christophe Lemoine said the French reaction to the warrants would be “in line with ICC statutes” but declined to say whether France would arrest the leaders if they came to the country. “It’s a point that is legally complex,” he said.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani likewise hedged his response, saying, “We support the ICC, while always remembering that the court must play a legal role and not a political role. We will evaluate together with our allies what to do and how to interpret this decision.”
The foreign ministers of Sweden and Norway both expressed confidence in the court, but did not say explicitly whether they would execute the arrest warrant if in a position to.
In the United States, by contrast, leaders on both sides of the aisle condemned the decision.
US President Joe Biden’s administration, which had publicly denounced the initial request for arrest warrants, “fundamentally rejects” the decision, a White House National Security spokesperson told The Times of Israel.
“We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” the spokesperson added.
When the ICC prosecutor announced his decision to request the arrest warrants in May, the US said at the time that he had failed to provide Israel with the opportunity to investigate the claims itself.
Stephanie Hallett, US deputy chief of mission at the US Embassy in Israel, said Thursday that the ICC “does not have jurisdiction in this instance,” because “the complementarity principle has absolutely not been applied,” referring to the principle that if a state is capable of investigating crimes committed there on its own, the international court does not have jurisdiction.
She added that ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan “absolutely had an opportunity to get on a plane to come here and engage with Israel. Instead, he chose not to get on the plane.”
Hallett said Thursday morning that an official response from Biden to the arrest warrants would be coming shortly, describing the imminent comments as “very strong.”
While the Biden administration has spoken against the ICC and ICJ cases against Israel, it has to date rejected calls from Republican lawmakers to sanction the court as President-elect Donald Trump did in his first term.
But GOP congressman Michael Waltz, whom President-elect Donald Trump has said he will appoint as his national security advisor, said: “You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January.”
Ritchie Torres, among the most pro-Israel Democrats in the US Congress, also called to sanction the court. In a lengthy post to X, the representative from New York said the arrest warrants represented “the weaponization of international law at its most egregious,” calling it “persecution posing as prosecution.”
“The ICC ignores the cause and context of the war,” Torres said, adding that not only did the Hamas terror group start the war with its October 7, 2023 attack — in which terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages — the group also “carefully constructed a battlefield designed to maximize the loss of civilian life” in Gaza.
“None of that context seems to matter to the kangaroo court of the ICC, which cannot let facts get in the way of its ideological crusade against the Jewish State,” he said.
In June, the House passed a bill that, if it became law, would cancel the US visas of ICC officials, restrict entry of, and place financial restrictions on any of the court’s officials who are seeking to detain or prosecute allies of the United States.
US President Joe Biden said at the time he was “strongly opposed” to the legislation which passed with a majority of 247-155, including with the support of 42 Democrats.
It has not been taken up by the US Senate, however, though Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, called the initial request for arrest warrants “reprehensible.”
On Wednesday, roughly a third of Senate Democrats voted in favor of three failed bids to block the sale of offensive weapons to Israel, underscoring the internal divide among Democrats on the issue.
Republican Senator John Thune, who is set to succeed Schumer in January, vowed that if the ICC does not reverse its decision, the Senate will “immediately pass sanctions legislation, as the House has already done on a bipartisan basis,” at the start of the next Congress.
Centrist Susan Collins and vocally pro-Israel Democrat John Fetterman also expressed their opposition to the arrest warrants, with the latter posting to X a headline about the decision, captioned, “No standing, relevance, or path. Fuck that.”
Also denouncing the warrants was Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who posted on X that his country “declares its deep disagreement” with the decision, which he said “ignores Israel’s right to self-defense against the constant attacks by terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.’
The International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, Netherlands
International human rights organizations praised the decision and urged states to execute the arrest warrants.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu is now officially a wanted man,” said Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard. “ICC member states and the whole international community must stop at nothing until these individuals are brought to trial before the ICC’s independent and impartial judges.”
Human Rights Watch, likewise, said the warrants “break through the perception that certain individuals are beyond the reach of the law. These warrants should finally push the international community to address atrocities and secure justice for all victims in Palestine and Israel.”
In the Middle East, several states were quick to welcome the decision.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said the ICC’s decision must be implemented, adding that “Palestinians deserve justice” after what he termed Israel’s “war crimes” in Gaza.
Turkish Justice minister Yilmaz Tunc, meanwhile, said on X that the arrest warrants were “a belated but positive decision to stop the bloodshed and put an end to the genocide in Palestine,” invoking an accusation that Israel strongly denies.
“The barbaric Israeli authorities, who target our innocent Palestinian brothers and sisters… must be brought to justice as soon as possible for their war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Tunc said.
Turkey has often hosted Hamas leaders and has been vocally supportive of the terror group in its war against Israel, frequently comparing Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler and the campaign in Gaza to the Holocaust.
The ICC’s warrants came some thirteen months after the Hamas terror group invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 42,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the subsequent fighting, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF, in addition to two civilians who entered the Strip prior to the war, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
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