THE Labour Government would live up to its legal obligations and arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot on UK soil, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson has said.
However, addressing journalists on Friday, Keir Starmer’s representative also said that the Labour leader would continue to talk to the Israeli prime minister despite the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants.
Netanyahu is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the top UN court, which issued an arrest warrant on Thursday.
The news means that the Labour Government is legally obliged, under the 2001 ICC Act as well as the Rome Statute, to rubber-stamp and then carry out the arrest warrant should Netanyahu visit the UK.
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Asked about the arrest warrant on Friday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said: “The UK will always comply with its legal obligations as set out by domestic law and indeed international law.”
However, the spokesperson also refused to explicitly comment on “hypotheticals” – such as Netanyahu visiting the UK – and said they would not “talk about specific cases”.
Number 10 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.
Asked about contact with the Israeli leader, they said: “The Prime Minister will continue to speak to the prime minister of Israel and indeed all allies in order to conduct the essential business of reaching a ceasefire in the Middle East.”
They added: “It’s obviously important that we have a dialogue with Israel at all levels to find a diplomatic solution to this war.”
Prime Minister Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy are yet to speak on the arrest warrants.
Netanyahu last visited the UK in March 2023.
Now the chair of Westminster’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Thornberry told Sky News: "If Netanyahu comes to Britain, our obligation under the Rome Convention would be to arrest him under the warrant from the ICC.
"[It’s] not really a question of should, we are required to because we are members of the ICC."
Downing Street backed the ICC on Thursday after it issued the arrest warrants, saying the Government respected the independence of the court.
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The ICC also issued a warrant for former Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, and Mohammed Deif, the head of Hamas’s armed wing, over the October 7 2023 attacks that triggered Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Israel says that Deif is dead.
Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel described the warrants as “concerning and provocative” and called on the Government to “condemn” them.
Patel criticised the ICC for drawing a “moral equivalence” between Israel’s actions in Gaza and Hamas.
She said: “The Labour Government must condemn and challenge the ICC’s decision.”
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Before the General Election in July, Tory ministers had been considering a legal challenge to the issuing of arrest warrants, but the Labour administration dropped that idea, saying it was a matter for the court.
The ICC said there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu and Gallant were responsible for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare, and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts”.
The court’s pre-trial chamber also found “reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”.
The impact of the warrants is likely to be limited since Israel and its major ally, the US, are not members of the ICC.
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