From the Liveblog of
Thursday, January 9, 2025
House okays bill to sanction ICC over Israeli arrest warrants; Senate path to be harder
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
The US House of Representatives advances legislation to sanction the International Criminal Court over the arrest warrants it issued against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The legislation still needs to be passed by the Senate where it will have a harder time passing. Republicans will need to recruit around seven Democrats to vote with them, which may be difficult given that the outgoing Biden administration has to date refrained from backing such punitive measures against the court, not wanting to delegitimize the international body whose sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin it supports.
Today’s vote in the House passes overwhelmingly with 243 lawmakers voting in favor of sanctioning the ICC, 155 voting against and one lawmaker abstaining. All 140 votes against the legislation came from Democrats. The lone abstention came from Republican Rep. Thomas Massie who tweeted afterward that the House “should not get involved in disputes between other countries.”
Roughly 30 Democrats joined Republicans in voting to advance the bill.
The breakdown is largely the same as the one on similar House legislation last year that failed to advance out of the Senate, though, the number of “Nos” was slightly lower amid absences due to former president Jimmy Carter’s funeral and the wildfires in Los Angeles.
Republicans prioritized the legislation out of the gate with the new GOP-controlled Congress and Senate Majority Leader John Thune has vowed to pass it.
The bill urges US sanctions against any ICC official or entities backing The Hague who advance “any effort to investigate, arrest, detain or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.”
The sanctions include blocking or revoking visas and prohibiting US property transactions.
The legislation states that the US and Israel are not signatories to the Rome Statute that created the ICC, which accordingly has no jurisdiction over their conduct.
AIPAC has urged lawmakers to back the legislation, while the more dovish J Street has come out against it.
