Benjamin Netanyahu faces arrest if he enters Britain after an international arrest warrant was issued for him, Downing Street has indicated.
Number 10 refused to explicitly comment on “hypotheticals” but said the UK would follow its “legal obligations”.
It comes after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the Israeli prime minister and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza.
The UK will always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law
No 10 spokesperson
Asked whether Mr Netanyahu would be detained if he arrived on British soil, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said he could not “talk about specific cases”.
But asked whether the Government would comply with the law, he said: “The UK will always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law.”
Number 10 said that the domestic process linked to ICC arrest warrants has never been used to date by the UK because no one wanted by the international court had visited the country.
Asked whether a secretary of state would comply with requirements under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said: “Yes, the Government would fulfil its obligations under the Act and indeed its legal obligations.”
The Act states that the Secretary of State must, on receipt of a request for arrest from the ICC, “transmit the request and the documents accompanying it to an appropriate judicial officer”.
Number 10 would not specify which Cabinet minister would be responsible for doing so, but Home Secretary Yvette Cooper earlier said it was “not a matter for me”.
“The International Criminal Court is of course independent and we respect its independence and the role that it has to play,” she told Sky News.
She said there were “proper processes that need to be followed and therefore it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on those”.
“What I can say is that obviously the UK Government’s position remains that we believe the focus should be on getting a ceasefire in Gaza,” Ms Cooper added.
Downing Street backed the ICC on Thursday after it issued the arrest warrants, saying the Government respected the independence of the court.
The ICC also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s armed wing, over the October 7 2023 attacks that triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
A domestic court process would be required before Mr Netanyahu faced arrest if he set foot in the UK.
Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel described the warrants as “concerning and provocative” and called on the Government to “condemn” them.
Dame Priti criticised the ICC for drawing a “moral equivalence” between Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Hamas terrorist atrocity on October 7 2023.
She said: “The Labour Government must condemn and challenge the ICC’s decision.”
Before the general election in July, Tory ministers had been considering a legal challenge to the issuing of arrest warrants, but the Labour administration dropped that idea, saying it was a matter for the court.
The ICC said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant were responsible for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts”.
The court’s pre-trial chamber also found “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”.
The impact of the warrants is likely to be limited since Israel and its major ally, the US, are not members of the ICC.