United States President Joe Biden strongly criticized Thursday the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Mohammed Deif, the head of the armed wing of Hamas. These warrants, which accuse the leaders of war crimes and crimes against humanity, sparked an immediate reaction from Washington.
In a statement, Joe Biden called these decisions “scandalous” and firmly rejected any equal footing between Israel and Hamas. “Whatever the ICC may imply, there is no equivalence, none, between Israel and Hamas,” he said. Reiterating US support for its Israeli ally, he added: “We will always stand with Israel in the face of threats to its security. »
“Deep concern”
A spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, for its part, expressed its “deep concern” about the “eagerness of the prosecutor to request arrest warrants” and denounced “troubling errors in the process which led to this decision. Washington, which contests the jurisdiction of the ICC in this case, announced consultations with its partners, including Israel, to consider “next steps”.
The American political class, particularly the Republicans, reacted with indignation. Senator Lindsey Graham, close to Donald Trump, castigated an “absurd” and “irresponsible” institution and called on the Senate to act to sanction the ICC. For his part, Mike Waltz, future National Security Advisor to Donald Trump, promised a “strong response” to the “anti-Semitic bias” of international jurisdiction as soon as the president-elect takes the oath of office in January.
