International Criminal Court puts its reputation on trial by chasing Netanyahu

But their prominence and proximity to the Western interests is likely to draw greater attention and with it questions about the power and relevance of the court. What’s the point of the ICC if it can’t even reach our allies, those we do daily business with?

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After the warrants were issued, Israelis were accusing the ICC of corruption, incompetence and more.

Netanyahu’s office characterised the “anti-Semitic decision” as something akin to “a modern Dreyfus trial”.

Isaac Herzog, the country’s president, said the ICC’s decision marked “a dark day for justice [and] humanity.” It had chosen “terror and evil over democracy and freedom, and turned the very system of justice into a human shield for Hamas,” he added.

A more powerful challenge to the court’s legitimacy may be the White House’s firm rejection of the warrant.

“We remain deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision,” the White House said.

“The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter.”

But for President Joe Biden, there’s an issue of consistency.

In March, he publicly welcomed the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Putin. The court held no sway in the US, but the move made “a very strong point”, he told reporters. The Russian leader had “clearly committed war crimes”, he added.

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Donald Trump’s views on justice will not carry much clout among scholars of jurisprudence but could pack a serious political punch.

At the time of writing, the president-elect had yet to comment on the ICC warrants, but he is likely to be weighing his response carefully.

He has a horrendously complex situation in the Middle East to manage when he takes office in January. In this context, the ICC warrants are likely to be seen as important transactional cards.

And on instinct, Trump may be torn. At war with the judiciary at home, and a long-time critic of transnational institutions, it is hard to imagine he has much love for the ICC.

Indeed, his administration imposed sanctions on it during his last term.

Meanwhile, Mike Waltz, who Trump has tapped to serve as national security advisor, said the court should expect “a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC and United Nations come January”.

On the other hand, the president-elect has called on Israel to end the war in Gaza and “stop killing people” several times over in the last year to no avail. That positioning is credited with winning votes from Arab Americans in November.

“I think Israel made a very big mistake,” Trump told an Israeli newspaper in April, describing the bombing of civilian apartment blocks in Gaza.

“I wanted to call and say don’t do it. These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, oh, that’s a terrible portrait. It’s a very bad picture for the world. The world is seeing this … every night, I would watch buildings pour down on people.”

In Europe, politicians were also treading carefully. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said the ICC’s decision should be respected and implemented, while a spokesperson for Sir Keir Starmer said: “We respect the independence of the International Criminal Court.”

Unfortunately for Netanyahu and Gallant, that sort of political ambivalence may be enough to keep them grounded, or at least on flight paths that avoid the airspace and runways of all 124 ICC member states.

In most of Western Europe, the courts still operate independently of the state and they play a very long game – as Chile’s general Augusto Pinochet found out on a brief trip to London way back in 1998.