US House votes to advance bill to sanction ICC over Israel arrest warrants

In retaliation for the Israeli prime minister’s arrest warrants against former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” was passed by US Congress’ lower chamber on Thursday by a overwhelmingly positive vote, 243 to 140, as a sign of strong support for Israel.

Forty-five Democrats joined 198 Republicans in backing the bill. No Republicans were absent from the vote.

A Republican majority was sworn in earlier this month, so the bill is now heading to the Senate.

Any foreigner who assists the ICC in its efforts to question, detain, or prosecute a US citizen or citizen of an ally-nation does not recognize the court’s authority, as per the legislation’s proposed sanctions.

The Rome Statute, which established the ICC, was signed by neither Israel nor the US.

Any foreigners who materially or financially support the court’s efforts would be denied visas, as well as the freezing of property assets.

Representative Brian Mast, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stated in a statement before Thursday’s vote that “America is passing this law because a kangaroo court is attempting to arrest the prime minister of our great ally, Israel.

The vote, one of the first since the new Congress was seated last week, underscored strong support among President-elect Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans for Israel’s government, despite its ongoing war in Gaza.

Since the start of the conflict in October 2023, over 46, 000 Palestinians have died, many of them children and women. Israel’s actions in Gaza are “concouraging with the characteristics of genocide,” according to UN experts.

In response, ICC prosecutors issued the arrest warrants for Gallant and Netanyahu last May.

In response, US legislators threatened retaliation against the ICC. Numerous human rights organizations urged US President Joe Biden to reject calls for harsh measures in a letter sent in May to the incoming US president.

The groups wrote at the time that “acting on these calls would seriously harm the rights of all victims globally and the US government’s ability to advance human rights and justice.”

Prior to Thursday’s vote, a group of human rights organizations wrote a second letter this week denouncing the House bill as an “attack on an independent judicial institution.”

According to them, enraging the court will “violate the ability of desperate victims across all the court’s investigations to access justice, weaken the credibility of sanction tools in other contexts, and put the United States at odds with its closest allies.”

The letter warned that the US would suffer from the stigma of siding with impunity over justice if ICC allies were subject to “asset freezes and entry restrictions.”

Nevertheless, the US Senate, under Majority Leader John Thune, &nbsp, has promised swift consideration of the act so Trump can sign it into law after he takes office on January 20.

Trump sanctioned senior ICC officials in his first year in office for their work on the court’s investigations into Israeli and US crimes against Americans in occupied Palestinian territory in 2020. President Biden later lifted those sanctions.

The ICC, based in The Hague, is a permanent court that can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.

Since 2015, the court has begun an investigation into crimes committed there by both Israeli and Hamas officials.

Despite not adhering to the ICC, the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a member state regardless of the perpetrator’s nationality.

The US has occasionally supported the court, such as when the top prosecutor of the ICC requested that Russian President Vladimir Putin be detained for allegedly committing war crimes in Ukraine. Russia, like Israel and the US, is not a member of the court.

The prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant has stated that his decision is consistent with the court’s policy in all of its cases, and that the warrants could stop criminal activity.

Source: Aljazeera