UK Challenges International Court’s Netanyahu Arrest Warrant Push

The United Kingdom submitted a brief questioning to the International Criminal Court challenging its jurisdiction over Israel, potentially delaying moves to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, news reports revealed on Thursday.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli figures, including Netanyahu, in May accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The warrants have not yet been issued but the decision on whether doing so would be lawful or not may be delayed by the British government’s move, which was revealed on Thursday but made on June 10.

The United Kingdom submitted a brief as an entity not party to the case, offering information or expertise pertinent to the court’s future decisions. The British submission hinges on the fact Israel is not a member of the court and, while Palestinian leaders joined in 2015, the Oslo Accords signed by Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat in 1993 made clear Israel alone has legal jurisdiction over its soldiers.

The ICC awarded itself the competence to investigate war crimes in Palestinian and Israeli territory in 2021, but the British paper challenges this power.

The Times of Israel reported that the ICC originally tried to keep the UK’s challenge secret. Now that it is out in the open, other ICC members have until July 12 to submit their own briefs on the matter. A decision on issuing arrest warrants or not appears to be suspended until after this time, so the court’s pre-trial chamber can consider these questions.

The United Kingdom government has previously made abundantly clear the decision by the ICC’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan, who is a UK-born human rights lawyer, to pursue an arrest warrant is not welcome. As reported in May when the announcement was made, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called it “deeply unhelpful,” saying there was no moral equivalence between a diplomatic state – Israel – defending itself and “the terrorist group Hamas”.