Britain has filed a brief questionnaire with the International Criminal Court challenging the court’s jurisdiction over Israel, which could delay moves to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, reports said on Thursday.
The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor announced in May that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The warrants have not yet been issued, but a decision on whether they are lawful could be delayed by a move by the British government that was unveiled on Thursday but set for June 10.
The UK submitted a submission as an entity not party to the case, providing information and expertise relevant to the court’s upcoming decision. The UK submission hinges on the fact that Israel is not a member state of the court and that, while Palestinian leaders joined in 2015, the Oslo Accords, signed by Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat in 1993, make it clear that only Israel has legal jurisdiction over its own soldiers.
The International Criminal Court gave itself the powers to investigate war crimes in Palestinian and Israeli territory in 2021, but the British newspaper is challenging this authority.
‘Totally useless’: UK rejects international court arrest warrant for Netanyahuhttps://t.co/1LKWInvYOQ
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 21, 2024
of The Israel Times report The ICC initially sought to keep the UK’s challenge secret. Now that it has been made public, other ICC member states have until July 12 to submit their own submissions on the matter. A decision on whether to issue an arrest warrant appears likely to be reserved until then, so that the Court’s Pre-Trial Chamber can consider the issues.
The British government has previously made it clear that it did not welcome the decision by ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, a British-born human rights lawyer, to seek arrest warrants. As reported when the announcement was made in May, British Chancellor Rishi Sunak called the decision “utterly unhelpful,” saying there was no moral equivalence between Israel, as a diplomatic nation, defending itself and the “terrorist organization Hamas.”
