(RightWing.org) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Washington, DC, later this month — but the ongoing war in Gaza is forcing him to take extra care with his travel plans. The controversial leader will be flying directly to the US instead of stopping off in Europe to meet other allies. The reason is that he’s worried about being arrested.
On July 24, Netanyahu, who’s served as Israel’s prime minister three times including his current term which began in 2022, will make a speech to the US Congress. Normally he’d take the chance to visit European leaders while he was making an international trip, but this time that’s more complicated.
On May 20, Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced that he plans to apply for an arrest warrant against Netanyahu for alleged crimes committed by Israel during the war with Hamas.
The ICC currently has 124 member states, including every country in Europe except Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, and they’re all required to carry out the court’s arrest warrants. That means if Netanyahu is in an ICC member state when the court issues a warrant, that state’s police will have no choice but to arrest him and hand him over to the court — even if their government is an ally of Israel.
In practice, many countries would refuse to arrest him, arguing that as a head of government he has immunity, but there’s a risk. The UK launched a legal challenge to the ICC in June, saying the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over Israeli citizens. This has already delayed the warrant against Netanyahu by several weeks, but Britain’s new Labour government is expected to drop that case.
Even Germany, traditionally a strong supporter of Israel as part of its efforts to atone for Nazism, has confirmed it would enforce a warrant against Netanyahu if one is issued.
Neither Israel nor the US is a member of the ICC, so Netanyahu is safe if he flies directly between the two countries, but a visit to Europe would at the minimum be a publicity nightmare right now — and in the worst case, he could end up in jail.
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