United States legislators are contemplating imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) if it issues an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US House Speaker Mike Johnson said.
“In the absence of leadership from the White House, Congress is reviewing all options, including sanctions, to punish the ICC and ensure its leadership faces consequences if they proceed. If the ICC is allowed to threaten Israeli leaders, ours could be next,” the US House Speaker said in a statement yesterday.
He further said: “The ICC has no authority over Israel or the United States, and the baseless and illegitimate decision should face global condemnation.”
ICC chief prosecutor Karim A A Khan on Monday announced the filing of arrest warrant applications against both Netanyahu and Israel Defence Minister Yoav Gallant alongside Hamas’s three top leaders – Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, for allegedly committing crimes against humanity during Isreal’s seven-month-old war in Gaza.
Republican legislators called for the United States to impose sanctions on the ICC.
Illegitimate
House Republican Conference chair Elise Stefanik told the New York Post that ‘the ICC is an illegitimate court that equivocates a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical groups that commit genocide’. Stefanik met Netanyahu as the warrants were announced.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a statement called the warrants ‘shameful and unserious’.
Earlier this month, Representative Texas introduced the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act to revoke visas for ICC officials who investigate or prosecute US officials or American allies.
Meanwhile, human rights attorney Amal Clooney is among the experts who advised the ICC prosecutor to seek the arrest warrants.
The wife of actor George Clooney in a statement explained how she had found herself advising ICC chief prosecutor Khan.
“I served on this panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives. The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict,” Clooney said in the statement shared on the Clooney Foundation for Justice website.
US President Joe Biden himself termed the ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants as ‘outrageous’ stating that the US ‘will always stand with Israel against threats to its security’.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the fundamentally rejects the ICC Prosecutor equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
The US enovy to Saudi Arabia said forging formal Israeli-Saudi relations as part of an emerging trilateral deal involving Washington would require a calming of the Gaza war and a discussion of prospects for Palestinian governance.
“There’s going to have to be some period of quiet, I think, in Gaza, and there’s going to have to be a conversation about how do you deal with the question of the future of Palestinian governance,” ambassador Jack Lew said.
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