The UK will no longer oppose the International Criminal Court’s efforts to seek an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, marking a major foreign policy shift for the country’s new left-wing globalist government.
The British government submitted a written opinion to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in June questioning the court’s jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel, and questioning the court’s efforts to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Galant. A spokesman for 10 Downing Street, the official residence and home of the British Prime Minister, has now implicitly indicated that the matter will not be pursued any further, and the new British government, which switched from a globalist center-right to a globalist social democratic left in this month’s general election, has not wavered in this stance.
British broadcaster Sky News Related A spokesman said the British government’s new position was that the warrant was purely a matter for the ICC to decide and that the UK would no longer provide legal advice. Downing Street said its previous objections would be withdrawn.
Britain challenges international court’s move to issue arrest warrant for Netanyahu https://t.co/JIbrQvjEXo
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 29, 2024
As reported in June, Karim Khan, the British-born human rights lawyer who currently serves as the ICC’s chief prosecutor, is seeking arrest warrants against Israeli government leaders. The British government has previously publicly stated that it opposes this “completely unhelpful” move, and has privately Amicus Brief Regarding the jurisdiction of the court.
The UK’s brief, released a few weeks later, addressed the fact that Israel is not a member state of the ICC and therefore not subject to its judgements, as well as the 1993 Oslo Accords, which, with the consent of Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat, provided that Israel held itself legally responsible. It noted that while the ICC gave itself the powers to investigate war crimes in Palestinian and Israeli territory in 2021, the UK government challenged whether it had the right to do so.
Those objections have now been withdrawn, according to a Downing Street statement.
The move to abandon involvement in the ICC case against Israel comes just weeks after the UK’s new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, took office. hinted If Palestine were to be recognised as a state, Officially recognized Given the damage it would cause to relations between the UK and the US, it will have to wait.
