European governments cannot pick and choose whether to execute arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against two Israeli leaders and a Hamas commander, the EU’s foreign policy chief said, on Saturday.
Recall that the ICC issued the warrants on Thursday against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader, Ibrahim Al-Masri, for alleged crimes against humanity. All EU member States are signatories to the ICC’s founding treaty, called the Rome Statute.
Several EU States have said they will meet their commitments under the statute if needed, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has invited Netanyahu to visit his country, assuring him he would face no risks if he did so. Those same obligations were also binding on countries aspiring to join the EU, he said.
The United States has rejected the ICC’s decision, and Israel said the ICC move was antisemitic.
Israel’s 13-month campaign in Gaza has killed about 44,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly all the enclave’s population while creating a humanitarian crisis, Gaza officials say.
In their decision, the ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza”.
The warrant for Masri lists charges of mass killings during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Israel says it has killed Masri.
