President Biden is condemning the International Criminal Court\u2019s (ICC\u2019s) decision to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as \u2018outrageous.\u2019<\/p>\n
ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced earlier Monday that his office has \u2018reasonable grounds\u2019 to believe Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leaders have committed \u2018war crimes and crimes against humanity\u2019 since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018The ICC prosecutor\u2019s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,\u2019 Biden said in a statement issued Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u2018And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence \u2013 none \u2013 between Israel and Hamas,\u2019 Biden added. \u2018We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,\u2019 the president continued.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Antony Blinken also took aim at the ICC\u2019s announcement, saying in a separate statement Monday that the State Department rejects the \u2018[p]rosecutor\u2019s equivalence of Israel with Hamas,\u2019 calling it \u2018shameful.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The United States has been clear since well before the current conflict that that ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter. The ICC was established by its state parties as a court of limited jurisdiction. Those limits are rooted in principles of complementarity, which do not appear to have been applied here amid the Prosecutor\u2019s rush to seek these arrest warrants rather than allowing the Israeli legal system a full and timely opportunity to proceed,\u2019 Blinken argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Blinken noted that in other matters, \u2018the Prosecutor deferred to national investigations and worked with states to allow them time to investigate\u2019 and \u2018did not afford the same opportunity to Israel, which has ongoing investigations into allegations against its personnel.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018There are also deeply troubling process questions.\u00a0Despite not being a member of the court, Israel was prepared to cooperate with the Prosecutor. In fact, the Prosecutor himself was scheduled to visit Israel as early as next week to discuss the investigation and hear from the Israeli Government,\u2019 Blinken continued. \u2018The Prosecutor\u2019s staff was supposed to land in Israel today to coordinate the visit. Israel was informed that they did not board their flight around the same time that the Prosecutor went on cable television to announce the charges. These and other circumstances call into question the legitimacy and credibility of this investigation.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The decision also \u2018does nothing to help, and could jeopardize, ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire agreement that would get hostages out and surge humanitarian assistance in, which are the goals the United States continues to pursue relentlessly,\u2019 Blinken said.<\/p>\n\n
President Biden is condemning the International Criminal Court\u2019s (ICC\u2019s) decision to pursue arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as \u2018outrageous.\u2019 ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced earlier Monday that his office has \u2018reasonable grounds\u2019 to believe Netanyahu, Gallant and Hamas leaders have committed \u2018war crimes and crimes against humanity\u2019 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19370,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-19369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}