President Biden on Monday condemned the choice by the Worldwide Legal Court docket’s chief prosecutor to hunt arrest warrants for 2 high Israeli officers — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Protection Minister Yoav Gallant — when he requested warrants for the leaders of Hamas, saying in a White Home assertion that “no matter this prosecutor may indicate, there is no such thing as a equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.”
Mr. Biden’s choice to face firmly behind Mr. Netanyahu was echoed by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who referred to as the transfer by the prosecutor, Karim Khan, “shameful” in a press release that mentioned the US rejected his “equivalence of Israel with Hamas.”
Mr. Blinken accused Mr. Khan of going “on cable tv to announce the costs” whilst his workers canceled a deliberate go to to Israel to debate the I.C.C.’s inquiry into Israel’s conduct of the struggle. “These and different circumstances name into query the legitimacy and credibility of this investigation,” he mentioned.
“It’s shameful,” Mr. Blinken mentioned of the prosecutor’s choice to request warrants for leaders of each side within the battle, implying their equivalence. “Hamas is a brutal terrorist group that carried out the worst bloodbath of Jews because the Holocaust and remains to be holding dozens of harmless individuals hostage, together with Individuals. This choice does nothing to assist, and will jeopardize, ongoing efforts to succeed in a cease-fire settlement that will get hostages out and surge humanitarian help in.”
The forceful denunciation of the I.C.C. got here, nevertheless, amid growing tensions between the US and Mr. Netanyahu over Israel’s conduct of the struggle and its preparations for a significant offensive into Rafah, a metropolis filled with displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza. Mr. Biden has repeatedly warned Mr. Netanyahu to not take actions that will endanger the a whole bunch of 1000’s of civilians sheltering there.
Mr. Biden and different administration officers have criticized the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza in response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault as inflicting extra casualties and bodily destruction than essential. However Mr. Biden has additionally mentioned he is not going to abandon Israel, and has insisted that Mr. Netanyahu and the nation’s leaders have a proper to defend their individuals in opposition to threats of terrorism.
America has mentioned prior to now that the I.C.C. doesn’t have jurisdiction within the battle in Israel, which isn’t a member of the court docket. In his assertion, Mr. Blinken referred to as it a “court docket of restricted jurisdiction” and criticized it for a “rush to hunt these arrest warrants.”
Hours later, Mr. Blinken’s spokesman on the State Division, Matthew Miller, went additional, saying in a press briefing in Washington that “I don’t have any doubt” that the issuing of arrest warrants for the Israeli leaders “will embolden Hamas.”
