Downing Street refused to comment on ‘specific cases’ but said the UK ‘will always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law’
Benjamin Netanyahu faces arrest if he enters Britain after an international arrest warrant was issued for him, Downing Street has signalled.
No10 refused to explicitly comment on “hypotheticals” but said the UK would follow its “legal obligations”. The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the Israeli prime minister, as well as his former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes in Gaza on Thursday.
Asked whether Mr Netanyahu would be detained if he arrived on British soil, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman on Friday said he could not “talk about specific cases”. But asked whether the Government would comply with the law, he said: “The UK will always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law.”
Downing Street said that the domestic process linked to ICC arrest warrants has never been used to date by the UK because no one wanted by the international court had visited the country. The Act states that the Secretary of State must, on receipt of a request for arrest from the ICC, “transmit the request and the documents accompanying it to an appropriate judicial officer”.
No10 would not specify which Cabinet minister would be responsible for doing so, but Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Friday it was “not a matter for me”. She said there were “proper processes that need to be followed and therefore it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to comment on those”.
Ms Cooper said the “vast majority” of ICC cases “never” become a matter for the British legal or law enforcement system but that there are “proper Government processes that need to be followed” if they ever become an issue for the UK. “The International Criminal Court is of course independent and we respect its independence and the role that it has to play,” she added.
The ICC also issued a warrant for Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s armed wing, over the October 7 2023 attacks that triggered Israel ‘s offensive in Gaza. Israel claims to have killed Deif in an airstrike in July, but the court’s pre-trial chamber said it would “continue to gather information” to confirm his death.
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For Netanyahu and Gallant, the court found reasonable grounds to believe they each bear criminal responsibility for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”. The ICC’s arrest warrants are of momentous significance as it marks the first time that leaders of a democracy and Western-aligned state have ever been charged by the court in its 22-year history.
Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel described the warrants as “concerning and provocative” and called on the Government to “condemn” them. Dame Priti criticised the ICC for drawing a “moral equivalence” between Israel’s actions in Gaza and the Hamas terrorist atrocity on October 7 2023.
No10 echoed: “There is no moral equivalence between Israel, a democracy, and Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, who are terrorist organisations. We remain focused on pushing an immediate ceasefire to bring an end to the devastating violence in Gaza.”
On Thursday the US, which is not a member of the ICC, said it “fundamentally rejects” the ICC’s decision.
