Israeli officials are concerned the Biden administration may abandon the Netanyahu government if the ICC issued arrest warrants against the Israeli prime minister and senior members of his cabinet.
“Where is Biden? Why is he quiet while Israel will potentially be thrown under the bus?” an Israeli diplomatic source told the Jerusalem Post on Sunday.
The source’s comments follow reports in Israeli media this week citing senior ICC sources that the Hague could not consider arrest warrants against Israeli leaders without Washington’s informal consent.
“The sources at The Hague said that it is impossible that the chief prosecutor would have decided on such a dramatic step, in a war that is still ongoing…if he had not at least had a ‘green light’ from the Americans. If this is true, this is another unprecedented low in relations between Israel and the US, at a very sensitive time, on the eve of the ground entry to Rafah,” Israeli journalist Amit Segal wrote.
The Jewish News Syndicate pointed to ICC chief prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan’s alleged tendency to take marching orders from the US, pointing to Washington’s support for his election in 2021, and to his controversial decision to close out two ICC cases which “greatly troubled the Americans” related to suspected US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Separately on Sunday, Israel’s Walla news site reported that Netanyahu had spearheaded a “nonstop push over the telephone” focused on calls to the White House, to prevent ICC arrest warrants from being issued.
Netanyahu warned Friday that Israel would “never stop defending ourselves,” and that while “decisions of the court in the Hague will not affect Israel’s actions, they would be a dangerous precedent threatening the soldiers and officials of any democracy fighting criminal terrorism and aggression.”
“Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense. The threat to seize the soldiers and officers of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it,” Netanyahu added.
Senior Israeli cabinet officials have held several emergency meetings to discuss the possible arrest warrants, which according to reports could target Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, over the way Israel has pursued its war in Gaza, which has resulted in the maiming and killing of over five percent of the Strip’s prewar population.
It remains unclear when or under what circumstances the arrest warrants could be issued. However, Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc called on the ICC prosecutor to expedite deliberations Saturday. “Israeli officials who have committed war crimes, aggression, murdered children, and committed genocide, including Netanyahu, must be brought before the Court,” Tunc said at an inter-parliamentary conference.
Turkiye’s possible role in any deliberations is not clear. Ankara itself is not a state party to the Court, nor a signatory to the Rome Statute, and has faced legal problems of its own with the highly-politicized Court in the recent past.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Biden
If media reports on the US’s “greenlighting” of a possible ICC investigation into Israeli officials are substantiated, they would constitute a continuation of Washington’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde approach to Israel in the past weeks. Last week, Israeli and US media reported on possible plans by Washington to sanction a radical Zionist IDF unit. The proposed sanctions were accompanied by President Biden’s signature of an aid bill providing Israel with $17 billion in new US military assistance.
“My commitment to Israel, I want to make clear again, is ironclad. The security of Israel is critical. I will always make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself against Iran and terrorists it supports,” Biden said at the White House on Wednesday after signing the bill into law.