President Biden on Monday condemned the choice by the Worldwide Prison 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 issued warrants for the leaders of Hamas, saying in a White Home assertion that “no matter this prosecutor may suggest, there isn’t any equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.”
Mr. Biden’s resolution to face firmly behind Mr. Netanyahu was echoed by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, who known as the transfer by the prosecutor, Karim Khan, “shameful” in an announcement that stated america rejected his “equivalence of Israel with Hamas.”
Mr. Blinken accused Mr. Khan of going “on cable tv to announce the costs” at the same time as his employees 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 stated.
“It’s shameful,” Mr. Blinken stated of the prosecutor’s resolution to subject 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 People. This resolution does nothing to assist, and will jeopardize, ongoing efforts to succeed in a cease-fire settlement that might get hostages out and surge humanitarian help in.”
The forceful denunciation of the I.C.C. got here, nonetheless, amid rising tensions between america and Mr. Netanyahu over Israel’s conduct of the struggle and its preparations for a serious offensive into Rafah, a metropolis filled with displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza. Mr. Biden has repeatedly warned Mr. Netanyahu to not take actions that might endanger the a whole lot 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 vital. However Mr. Biden has additionally stated 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 towards threats of terrorism.
The US has stated previously that the I.C.C. doesn’t have jurisdiction within the battle in Israel, which isn’t a member of the courtroom. In his assertion, Mr. Blinken known as it a “courtroom 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.”
