An arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu – Today in Focus Extra

This is The Guardian. From The Guardian, this is a today in focus extra edition with me, Hannah Moore. Today, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to the ICC, the crimes alleged against the pair include using starvation as a weapon of war. There are also international arrest warrants for former Defence Minister Joav Galant and Mohamed Dave, the military commander of Hamas, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza war.

Julian Borgia, you're the Guardian's senior international correspondent. The news has come out this afternoon that the International Criminal Court has issued these three arrest warrants. What does this actually mean? So in the case of Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Israeli Defense Minister, you have Galant, they are about Israeli operations in Gaza. And in particular, the obstruction of the supply of humanitarian relief

to Gaza, the three-judge panel really focus on that issue. And they clearly have ruled that the prime of evidence is that the obstruction of aid to Gaza has been deliberate. In the case of the one Hamas arrest warrant that has been issued, it is for the October 7th last year attack in which 1200 Israelis, mostly civilians were killed.

In the case of Muhammad Dev, the chamber ruled that it could not yet confirm that he was dead and that the court would continue to gather information on whether he was dead or not. Right. The Israeli government says that they killed him in an airstrike in July. In July, yes. In the case of the other two Hamas suspects who were originally named by the prosecutor, Yaya Sinwah and Ismail Hanayah, they are both confirmed dead.

So what will this practically mean? What powers does the ICC have to actually go after these three men? The ICC itself does not have enforcement mechanisms. The enforcement mechanism is the obligation of signatories to the Rome statute. And there are 124 signatories. They are as signatories are under obligation to carry out the arrest warrants issued by the court. So that would very much crimp

any travel plans that you have got land and Benjamin Netanyahu might have, they will still be able to travel to the US, not a not a signatory. He would be able to travel to Russia and China. But much of the world, he would have to think twice or they would have to think twice before they consider traveling there.

And when you talk about signatories, those are the 124 countries that assigned up as members of the ICC. And so if Netanyahu or Galant traveled to any of those countries, there's a risk that they'd be arrested. I'm keen to understand how significant this is for the ICC to have issued these arrest warrants. I mean, what kind of company does this put these men into?

This is really significant in terms of the history of the court and in terms of international law because up to now the court has really focused on war crimes and crimes against humanity. In Africa, like my Bashir, the Sudanese from the president,

Those are the people, and that is the company that, you know, in Galanta, keeping as well as Vladimir Putin, also indicted. But what is significant is this is a Western-aligned state. It is a democracy of sorts of people, you know, question in terms of Palestinian rights, but it is a robust democracy within Israel. And so this is new territory. And up to now, much

of the countries and much of the world has looked on the ICC as upholding sort of the double standards of the West, only going after crimes committed by enemies of the West or small countries with no power. So this is saying that no one is beyond the reach of international humanitarian law.

And the prosecutor, Karim Khan, he said back in May that he was seeking these arrest warrants. So it's taken some months to actually come to fruition. Are you surprised that it's finally happened?

I think that it would have been very difficult considering the scale of killing in Gaza for the pre-trial chamber to reject this request for warrants because it would be saying in a way that there is no case to answer. What they're saying is there is a case to answer before a full court.

43,000 people plus have died in this conflict in Gaza so far. So what's Netanyahu said in response? His office has come out with a statement, really all guns blazing, calling it anti-Semitic, calling the judges biased. I mean, these are definitely the Israeli government talking points when it comes to the ICC, as a whole, in the ICC's investigation of Israeli actions.

Israel challenged the jurisdiction of the court, but the court pointed out that Palestine, as such, was accepted as a member of the court in 2015. So it has jurisdiction and doesn't need Israeli approval to carry out investigations and carry out its work in the Palestinian territories. How do you think this is going to go down with Israeli people?

I think it will probably rally support around Netanyahu. The ICC is seen as having no role to play in judging Israel, broadly speaking, the Israeli public believe that they have

the legal mechanisms, the judicial mechanisms in place as a functioning democracy to judge their own people. And as a country, as a state, does not require the intervention of an international court. I think that is broadly the opinion of the large majority of Israelis, including fierce opponents of Netanyahu.

The US, as you say, is not a member of the ICC. It's Israel's biggest international ally given almost $18 billion in military aid to Israel in the past year. How is the US government likely to react to this?

It will be critical. It will be critical if the ICC doesn't believe the ICC has jurisdiction and agrees with Israel. Israel has the mechanisms in place to judge its own people. Obviously, the Biden administration will be accused here of double-spanded

because it has generally been supportive of the ICC in other cases, and particularly when it came to Russia and Russia's actions in Ukraine. So there will be criticism, but Netanyahu will

and can expect far more fulsome support. Of course, when Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, Trump, no friend of the ICC, imposed sanctions on the ICC back in 2020 for investigations into the U.S. and its allies in Afghanistan, but also in defense of Israel.

So there will be no hesitation on the part of a Trump administration to inviting Netanyahu to the US. So the stigma of an arrest warrant will not influence Trump and his administration. And what about the UK and across Europe, how are governments likely to react to this?

Well then mixed, I mean Europe has been split, Germany on the whole has been very against the ICC. So was the UK under the Tory government, the new Labour government has a more nuanced stand and it will not

challenge the ICC ruling head-on and I don't think any European country will be safe for Netanyahu to go out to visit no matter what public statements are made about the ICC. They are signatories and they are under the obligation of their membership of the court to carry out a respirator.

What effect then do you think this will have on the way that Netanyahu is operating in this war? Do you think in any way having this arrest warrant hanging over him might change the way he's running this?

We've seen over more than a year now that Gaza war has been underway. We've seen that Netanyahu is not influenced by anything really outside his own coalition. The people who can determine his political future are the members of his coalition and they are

even more gung-ho in the pursuit of this war, the right-wing members of that coalition who, if they withdrew their support, could end his political career. So he's going to look to them, he's not going to look to a court in the Hague just as he hasn't paid any attention to Washington or any other of Israel's allies. And of course his new defence minister is more hard-line than you have Galant was.

and essentially a Netanyahu loyalist who can be accounted on just to go along with what Netanyahu wants in these cases. So what happens now?

Well, the arrest ones go out, but the proceedings, any proceedings cannot go ahead because they on the whole do not try in absentia. So this is something in a way that for time being will be a talking point. It'll be highly symbolic in terms of the stigma that it carries, but it won't lead really to a change in any one of the main sort of protagonist's actions.

And there's a complication potentially that the ICC has launched an external investigation into the prosecutor, Karam Khan, on allegations of sexual misconduct. Does that at all undermine this?

I think inevitably it will be portrayed as undermining it because this is the prosecutor that sought these warrants and he now himself is under a shadow. But the pre-trial chamber making the decision really takes the decision away from Khan and makes it the decision of the court.

And so, whatever happens to him, now, even if he steps down and is replaced by another prosecutor, it is really now the court that has issued the warrants, and it is the court that is seeking to put Netanyahu and Galant on trial. Julian, thank you very much. Thank you.

That was the Guardian's senior international correspondent, Julian Borgia. You can follow his reporting on this story as it develops at TheGuardian.com. And I recommend going back to listen to an episode of Today in Focus that we made about this in May, when the ICC first said it was seeking arrest warrants. That's called, could Netanyahu really be arrested for war crimes? We'll put a link to it in the podcast page.

As I was talking to Julian, the US government issued a statement saying it rejects the ICC's judgement. In contrast, Josep Burrell, the Vice President of the European Union, said the arrest warrants should be upheld and that the decision binds all states. That's it for now. Today in focus, we'll be back in the morning as usual. Thanks for listening.

This is the Guardian.