Downing Street has been trying to avoid answering the question of whether Binyamin Netanyahu would face automatic arrest if he travels to the UK, Oliver Wright writes. But the law is clear: He would.
The International Criminal Court Act states that when the government receives a request from the ICC for the arrest and surrender of an individual, ministers are obliged to transmit that request to a senior magistrate.
Once the magistrate is satisfied that the warrant has been issued by the ICC, under the law he has no option but to “endorse the warrant for execution in the United Kingdom”. There is no option under the law for the magistrate to reject the request if has come from the ICC — and there appears to be no option for the Israeli government to legally oppose the arrest warrant.
In the case of Netanyahu, that process has not yet taken place, but it will — and once it has, he will face arrest if he comes to the UK.
Trump’s national security adviser blasts the ICC
Mike Waltz, President-elect Trump’s candidate for national security adviser, said that the International Criminal Court and the United Nations could “expect a strong response” to their alleged “antisemitic bias” when Trump returns to the White House.
The US, which is not a signatory to the ICC has long defended Israel against the investigation. In May, President Biden said an application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders was “outrageous”.
Khan concerned over ‘escalating violence’
Karim Khan also said that he was “deeply concerned about reports of escalating violence, further shrinking humanitarian access and continued expansion of allegations of international crimes in Gaza and the West Bank”.
He added: “We will continue to carry out our mandate in order to fulfil the fundamental commitment forming the basis of the Rome Statute: that the lives of all human beings have equal value.”
‘Live up to your commitments’ urges Karim Khan
Karim Khan, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, has called on all countries to live up to their commitments to the Rome Statue, the treaty that established the court, in his first comments since warrants were issued earlier today.
He said: “I appeal to all states parties to live up to their commitment to the Rome Statute by respecting and complying with these judicial orders. We count on their co-operation in this situation, as with all other situations under the court’s jurisdiction.”
He added that the ICC would “continue to seek co-operation from all stakeholders including the state of Israel and the state of Palestine” as part of the investigation.
Britain ‘would arrest Netanyahu’
Binyamin Netanyahu faces the prospect of arrest if he travels to the UK after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for his detention for war crimes in Gaza.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said today that the government respected the ICC as the “primary international institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes of international concern”.
The government’s position had not changed since Richard Hermer, the attorney general, said last month that the government would comply with its legal obligations under the ICC and do nothing that would undermines its work, the spokesman added.
Because an arrest warrant has been issued the UK would be under a legal obligation to arrest Netanyahu should he enters UK territory. However, Downing Street added that the ICC’s warrant would have to be endorsed by a British court before that could happen.
US rejects arrest warrants
The United States “fundamentally rejects” the issue of arrest warrants for Binyamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the White House has said.
“We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision. The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter,” a National Security Council spokesman said.
In May, President Biden described Karim Khan’s decision to apply for warrants against the Israeli prime minister and former defence minister as outrageous. “Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” he said. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security”.
Ed Davey calls for ceasefire
Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the UK government “must uphold and enforce” the ICC ruling, in line with its obligations under international law.
Corbyn: Warrants are ‘long overdue’
Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who now sits as independent MP, called the warrants “long overdue” and the “bare minimum,” urging Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, and David Lammy, the foreign secretary, to endorse them immediately.
Tories condemn ICC warrants
Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, has criticised the International Criminal Court for drawing a “moral equivalence” between Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Hamas terrorist atrocity on October 7 last year.
She said: “The decision by the ICC to issue arrest warrants for the democratically elected leader of Israel and Israel’s former defence minister is deeply concerning and provocative. This will do nothing to bring about the release of all hostages held and the bringing of much-needed aid into Gaza.
“The Conservative government did not believe the ICC has jurisdiction in this area, as Israel is not a signatory to the Rome statute, and because Palestine is not recognised as a state. The Labour government must condemn and challenge the ICC’s decision.”
Britain keeps focus on Gaza ceasefire
Civilians search for survivors after an Israeli airstrike on the area around the Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza
AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The British government has responded to the ICC’s decision to issue arrest warrants against Binyamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant and Mohammed Deif.
A spokesman said: “We respect the independence of the International Criminal Court, which is the primary international institution for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes of international concern.
“This government has been clear that Israel has a right to defend itself, in accordance with international law. There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, which are terrorist organisations.
“We remain focused on pushing for an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the devastating violence in Gaza. This is essential to protect civilians, ensure the release of hostages and to increase humanitarian aid into Gaza.”
European support for the ICC
ICC member countries are responding to today’s announcement.
Christophe Lemoine, the French foreign ministry spokesman, said the French reaction to the warrants would be “in line with ICC statutes” but declined to say whether France would arrest Netanyahu if he came to the country. “It’s a point that is legally complex,” he said.
Espen Barth Eide, Norway’s foreign minister, said: “It is important that the ICC carries out its mandate in a judicious manner. I have confidence that the court will proceed with the case based on the highest fair trial standards.”
Simon Harris, Ireland’s prime minister, said the warrants were “an extremely significant step”. Ireland respected the role of the ICC, he said, and anyone in a position to assist it in carrying out its vital work should do so “with urgency”.
Dutch ‘will arrest Netanyahu’
Binyamin Netanyahu will be arrested if he steps foot on Dutch soil, said Caspar Veldkamp, the country’s foreign minister, following the issue of a warrant for his arrest by the International Criminal Court, based in the Hague. Veldkamp said the same applied to warrants issued for Gallant, a former Israeli defence minister, and Mohammed Deif, a Hamas leader.
“The Netherlands respects the criminal court. When it comes to arrest warrants, it is clear: we execute an arrest warrant,” he said. “The Netherlands implements the Rome Statute 100 per cent.”
The Netherlands will also break off all “non-essential” diplomatic contact with Israel. That decision follows an outbreak of antisemitic violence in Amsterdam on November 9.
Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said the ICC warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were not political and the court decision should be respected and implemented.
The ICC’s move theoretically limits the movement of the Israeli politicians because any of the court’s 124 nation-state members would be obliged to arrest them should they arrive on their territory.
Borrell, who is visiting Amman, Jordan, said: “This decision is a binding decision and all states, all state parties of the court, which include all members of the European Union, are binding to implement this court decision.”
Netanyahu accuses Khan of corruption
Karim Khan is a British lawyer who has worked as a prosecutor for the ICC since 2021
PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW/REUTERS
Netanyahu also accused Karim Khan, the ICC prosecutor, of corruption, claiming that he was trying to save himself from accusations of misconduct which are now the subject of an external investigation.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said: “Israel utterly rejects the false and absurd charges of the International Criminal Court, a biased and discriminatory political body. No war is more just than the war Israel has been waging in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist organisation launched a murderous assault and perpetrated the largest massacre against the Jewish People since the Holocaust.
“No anti-Israel decision will prevent the State of Israel from defending its citizens. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will not give in to pressure. He will continue to pursue all the objectives that Israel set out to achieve in its just war against Hamas and the Iranian axis of terror.”
‘A modern-day Dreyfus trial’
Binyamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant at a press conference last month. Both are the subject of warrants issues by the ICC
ABIR SULTAN/EPA
Netanyahu has accused the ICC of antisemitism after it issued arrest warrants against himself and his former defence minister on Thursday, calling it “a modern-day Dreyfus trial”.
“The antisemitic decision of the International Criminal Court is comparable to the modern-day Dreyfus trial — and it will end in the same way,” Netanyahu said in a statement. He was referring to the scandal that rocked 19th-century France after Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain, was wrongly convicted of treason.
Gaza death toll ‘exceeds 44,000’
Earlier, Gaza’s health ministry, which is run by Hamas, said that 71 people had been killed in the previous 24 hours in the Gaza Strip, bringing the territory’s death toll to 44,056 since the start of the war.
Several houses sheltering displaced people were hit by Israeli airstrikes near the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, according to reports.
An Israeli ground offensive in northern Gaza has displaced up to 130,000 people over the past five weeks. This week, the UN said that parts of the area were under Israeli siege and that virtually no humanitarian aid had been delivered in the past 40 days.
Hamas has welcomed the warrants against Gallant and Netanyahu and urged the court to expand accountability to include all Israeli leaders.
Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, said that the warrants against the Israelis were an important step towards bringing justice for the victims. “But it remains a limited and spiritual step if it was not backed practically by all countries to get this decision implemented in compliance with law and justice,” he added.
He did not comment on Deif, the Hamas military chief who is also subject to an ICC warrant for crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder, taking hostages and rape.
‘Starvation, murder, persecution’
Announcing the warrants, the panel of ICC judges found it had “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant: “Each bear criminal responsibility for the following crimes as co-perpetrators for committing the acts jointly with others: the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.
Hamas’s most wanted are dead
Previously the ICC prosecutor had requested warrants against two other Hamas leaders, Yahya Sinwar, the group’s leader in Gaza, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of its political bureau, whose deaths have since been confirmed by Hamas.
Sinwar, considered the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, was found and killed in Gaza last month, according to the Israel Defence Forces.
• Read in full: How Israel killed Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s last man standing
Haniyeh, who had long led the group from exile in Qatar, was killed in an Israeli bomb attack in Tehran in late July.
Hamas chief wanted for crimes against humanity
Today the court also issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the Hamas military chief, for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Israel said in early August it had killed Deif in an air strike in southern Gaza in July, but Hamas has not confirmed his death.
Hamas fighters are accused of killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians and taking at least 245 hostages during their attack on October 7, based on the investigation undertaken by Khan’s office which included interviews with former hostages and witnesses from the Nova music festival and the hardest-hit kibbutzim.
The conflict in Gaza has since claimed 44,000 lives, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Israeli president: A dark day for justice
Figures from across Israel’s political spectrum defended Netanyahu and Gallant, who was sacked as defence minister this month.
President Herzog said that the ICC had chosen “the side of terror and evil over democracy and freedom and turned the very system of justice into a human shield for Hamas’ crimes against humanity”.
He said: “This is a dark day for justice. A dark day for humanity. Taken in bad faith, the outrageous decision at the ICC has turned universal justice into a universal laughing stock. It makes a mockery of the sacrifice of all those who fight for justice — from the Allied victory over the Nazis till today.”
Naftali Bennett, the Israeli former prime minister, said that the decision to issue warrants was a “mark of shame for the ICC” and the main opposition leader, Yair Lapid, called the decision a “reward for terrorism”.
Karim Khan KC investigation sparked Israeli anger
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, the British barrister Karim Khan KC, announced in May that he was pursuing Netanyahu, Gallant and Deif for war crimes, provoking anger in Israel and pressure from world leaders to drop the case against Netanyahu.
He also said he was applying for warrants for other Hamas leaders who have since been reported to have been died in Gaza. The Israel Defence Forces have since said they had killed Deif in an airstrike in Gaza in July.
In May, Khan said the arrest applications had resulted from “an independent and impartial investigation” separating claims from facts.
He was aided by a team of advisers including Amal Clooney, the human rights lawyer and wife of George Clooney.
Netanyahu and Gallant could be arrested in more than 120 countries
Israel had angrily denounced the potential for arrest warrants against its prime minister and defence minister before they were issued. Netanyahu has called the application for the warrants a “distortion of reality”.
The decision marks the first time the ICC has ever issued arrest warrants against leaders of a democratic country.
But on Thursday, the court said it unanimously rejected Israel’s challenge that it did not have jurisdiction. It also rejected Israel’s argument that it had not given Israel the opportunity to investigate the allegations itself before requesting the warrants.
Both Netanyahu and Gallant will now be liable for arrest if they travel to any of the more than 120 countries that are party to the ICC.
Netanyahu ‘guilty of crimes against humanity’
The arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant are for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least October 8 last year until May 20 this year.
The warrants are classified as secret to protect witnesses and safeguard the investigations, but the ICC decided to release information because, it said, similar conduct “appears to be ongoing”.
The ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant “each bear criminal responsibility” for the “war crime of starvation as a method of war” by “intentionally and knowingly [depriving] the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival” such as food, water, medicine and medical supplies.
It also accused them of the “crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhuman acts” and of “intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population” after the October 7 2023 attacks.