From the Liveblog of
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Netanyahu aide, Israeli officials slam ICC decision to leave arrest warrants in place
Nava Freiberg is The Times of Israel's deputy diplomatic correspondent.
A source close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with other Israeli officials, condemns the decision by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court in The Hague not to rule on a request by Israel to suspend its international arrest warrants against Netanyahu and previous Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
The decision “highlights the injustice done to Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister, when the Court issued absurd warrants without having the authority to do so,” an aide to the prime minister tells The Times of Israel in a statement.
“Israel expects the [ICC] to cancel the warrants immediately,” the source adds.
Israel won a procedural victory when the ICC ruled in favor today of an appeal by Israel against an earlier decision by the court which rejected Israel’s ability to challenge the court’s jurisdiction, sending the case back to the Pre-Trial Chamber to reconsider Israel’s argument that the court shouldn’t have jurisdiction over Israeli leaders.
The Appeals Chamber said, however, that it is not ruling on Israel’s request that the arrest warrants be suspended while the jurisdiction issue is worked out, arguing the issue was not directly connected to the matter of jurisdiction, and saying that was for the Pre-Trial Chamber to determine.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar writes on X in response to the ruling that “The [ICC] warrants were issued unlawfully. They are null and void.”
We said it from the start: The International Criminal Court in The Hague (ICC) doesn't have, and never had jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel's Prime Minister and its former Minister of Defense. Israel is not a member of the ICC and is not party to the "Rome…
— Gideon Sa'ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
“We said it from the start,” says the foreign minister, that the ICC “doesn’t have, and never had jurisdiction to issue arrest warrants against Israel’s Prime Minister and its former Minister of Defense. Israel is not a member of the ICC and is not party to the Rome Statute,” which allows for proceedings to be initiated against states that fail to cooperate with the court.
Sa’ar acknowledges that the ICC Appeals Court “instructed the Court today, to do what it should have done from the start: to make a determination with respect to jurisdiction. On this topic, there is only one correct answer: the Court has no jurisdiction over Israel.”
Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, says that the ICC “operates as a political tool serving Israel’s enemies” and that “the UN remains disgracefully silent in complicity.”
“The decision to revisit the question of jurisdiction exposes the lack of legitimacy behind the political arrest warrants. When international institutions punish democracies and ignore terrorism, they harm not only Israel but the very values on which the free world is built,” says the ambassador in a statement from his office today.
“Israel will continue to defend itself, in coordination with its partners, and will not remain silent in the face of such hypocrisy,” he concludes.
The Times of Israel Community.