UK government will not drop challenge to ICC Israeli arrest warrants: report

The UK’s governing Labour Party will not withdraw its challenge to the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, an Israeli newspaper claimed on Sunday.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy previously said that the UK would not object to ICC arrest warrants issued against the Israeli leaders and would even enforce them.

However, Israeli newspaper Maariv says that Lammy has given Israel assurances that the UK will maintain its objection to the applications that was originally raised by Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government.

The applications issued by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan accuse Netanyahu and Gallant with war crimes committed in the course of Israel’s war on Gaza.

However, to proceed with attaining the warrants, the applications must be approved by a panel of ICC judges and this is the stage at which the UK has lodged its objection.

Sunak’s previous government made the case that the 1993 Oslo Accords prevents the Palestinian Authority from prosecuting Israelis for war crimes, an argument critics say gives Israel carte blanche to do what it likes to Palestinians.

Palestine was incorporated into the ICC in 2015, with the court saying it has the power to investigate alleged war crimes across the occupied Palestinian territories in 2021.

Last week, UK newspaper The Guardian reported that the new Labour government would drop its objections to the ICC arrest warrants.

However, it emerged that the US had been quietly lobbying the new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new government to uphold its objections.

This is despite Lammy saying during the UK election, at a time when Labour was haemorrhaging Muslim votes due to its stances on Gaza, that not only would the UK drop its complaint but it would comply with the arrest warrants on the Israeli leaders.

Over the weekend, Lammy travelled to Israel and the occupied West Bank where he met with Netanyahu and called for a ceasefire, as well as the release of Israeli captives held in Gaza.