ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant deepen Israel’s isolation

Summary
The move by the International Criminal Court will complicate travel by Israel’s prime minister and former defense minister, who would risk arrest in the court’s member countries.Arrest warrants issued for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister over alleged war crimes threaten to deepen the global isolation of a country already under pressure around the world for its handling of the war in the Gaza Strip.
The move by the International Criminal Court will complicate travel by Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who would risk arrest in any of the court’s 124 member countries, which technically are obliged to enforce the arrest warrants.
The warrants will lead some governments to scale down contacts with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, according to legal experts and officials familiar with the situation. They could also spur efforts to bring new war-crimes cases against lower-ranking Israeli and Hamas officials in national courts in Europe and elsewhere.
More subtly, they could also encourage an ad-hoc pattern of shunning Israeli academics, defense companies and officials that has taken root in countries and institutions angry at the toll of the war in Gaza.
As of this summer, more than 20 universities in Europe and Canada had cut ties with Israeli institutions. Israeli companies have been shunned at trade fairs. Recently, former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked was denied a visa to enter Australia and participate in a conference organized by Jewish organizations on the grounds that she might incite discord.
“It sort of gives a stamp of quality to Israel’s isolation," said Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat. “This is not a protest at Columbia University. This is not a bunch of hooligans fighting each other on the streets of Amsterdam. This is the ICC."
The arrest warrants come after more than a year in which Israel has also faced a global outcry over the war in Gaza including protests, separate charges of genocide brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice and calls from Democrats in Congress to limit American arms transfers to Israel.
Israel invaded the Gaza Strip after the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, that left 1,200 people dead and more than 250 held hostage, around 100 of whom remain in Gaza, though dozens are feared dead. The war has killed about 44,000 Gazans, according to Palestinian health officials, who don’t say how many were combatants. The vast majority of the population has been displaced, and food and other essentials have been in short supply for much of the war.
The ICC’s warrants allege Netanyahu and Gallant committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during the offensive, including the use of starvation as a weapon and directing attacks against civilians. Netanyahu and Gallant each called the charges outrageous.
The ICC on Thursday also issued an arrest warrant for top Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif, who has been reported killed, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Its top prosecutor had sought warrants against two other Hamas leaders, Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar, but the court set them aside after they were killed by Israel.
Israel’s legal teams are still working to understand the extent of the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant. Most details of the court’s investigation are still secret, including from Israel and its legal teams, said Roy Schondorf, a lawyer advising Netanyahu on matters related to the court.
Israeli officials are concerned the warrants and the still-secret details of the charges could imperil Israeli government and military officials who travel abroad and could be detained for alleged war crimes.
As recently as last week, Israeli authorities warned an Israeli military reservist to quickly leave Cyprus over fear that pro-Palestinian organizations would try to pursue arrest warrants against him for alleged war crimes tied to his service in Gaza.
The ICC warrants are likely to have the greatest effect on Israel’s relations with countries in Europe, which have been broadly supportive of Israel since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and the resulting war. All 27 members of the European Union, along with the U.K., are parties to the Rome Statute, the international treaty that created the court.
European countries have been split in their reactions to the decision. Some, such as the Netherlands, say plainly they would enforce the arrest warrants. Hungary, led by right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, invited Netanyahu to visit on Friday in defiance of the ICC’s decision. Germany, caught between its support for the court and its history of the Holocaust, said it would carefully examine any steps it takes should Netanyahu or Gallant decide to visit.
Most European states haven’t said explicitly whether they would enforce the warrants, but officials and experts say they don’t expect the Israeli prime minister to take the risk.
“Almost all of them would arrest Netanyahu if he were to visit, which means it’s pretty guaranteed that he won’t," said Anthony Dworkin, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “I’d be quite surprised even if he goes to Hungary."
Aside from the possibility of arrests, European countries in the past have adopted a policy of avoiding nonessential contact with people subject to ICC warrants, for example Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta, who was elected president in 2013 after the court called for his arrest.
Even countries that have been critical of the ICC’s handling of the war in Gaza now face a legal obligation to enforce the arrest warrants if the leaders travel to their countries, putting them in a bind.
“They have a clear legal obligation to abide by the decision of the ICC and to implement these arrest warrants," said Clémence Bectarte, a Paris-based lawyer with the International Federation for Human Rights who worked to bring war-crimes charges in France against Syrian officials. “Of course, there may be political maneuvers to try to get around these legal obligations. But from a strict legal point of view, this is clear-cut."
Some European officials would likely continue to talk to Netanyahu or meet him in Israel or at a venue like the United Nations headquarters in New York, which is outside ICC jurisdiction in the U.S., Dworkin said.
Netanyahu can expect continued support from Washington, which isn’t a signatory to the ICC’s founding statute, though it has cooperated with the court in the past including in prosecutions against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
President Biden and his administration sharply criticized the arrest warrants Thursday, and officials aligned with President-elect Donald Trump have signaled they would take a hard line against the court. Trump’s pick for White House national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said Thursday the arrest warrants have no legitimacy.
“You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC and U.N. come January," he said.
U.N. officials can also meet with Netanyahu, despite the warrants. “The rule is that there should not be any contacts between U.N. officials and individuals subject to arrest warrants," a spokesman for the U.N. secretary-general said Thursday, but direct relations are possible to assist operational or other key issues. U.N. chief António Guterres met with Putin on the sidelines of the Brics Summit in October.
Other major powers including Russia, China and India aren’t members of the court. Of Israel’s key partners within the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, only Jordan is a full member.
With the issuing of the arrest warrants, Netanyahu and Gallant join a club of other ICC defendants that includes Putin, former Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir, Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony and Libya’s Saif al-Islam Gadhafi. The ICC has been criticized in the past for only taking cases from non-Western countries, particularly the crimes of various African leaders.
Bashir rarely left Sudan after the court issued arrest warrants for him in 2009 and 2010 on allegations of genocide. Gadhafi has remained in hiding in Libya for over a decade. Putin has confined his travel to a small group of countries in Russia’s immediate sphere of influence. He defied the arrest warrant against him to visit Mongolia, an ICC member, in September.