Members of Congress from both the Republican and Democratic parties have warned the International Criminal Court against issuing arrest warrants against Israeli officials, according to a Tuesday Axios report.
The report says that if arrest warrants are issued against high-ranking Israeli officials, the court would subsequently be met with sharp US response.
One Republican member of the House told Axios that legislation is being prepared in Congress to tackle such warrants. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the day before that the rumored warrants are "disgraceful" and "lawless."
"If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel," Axios quoted Johnson, with the Speaker calling on the President and his administration to demand that the ICC stand down.
Like Speaker Johnson, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly urged US President Joe Biden to intervene to prevent the warrants from being issued.
"The ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation, and we do not support its investigation," the report quoted the White House as saying.
US support of Israel
On Sunday, The Jerusalem Post reported that the ICC could not act against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other Israeli and IDF officials without overt or tactic support from the US, citing an Israeli diplomatic source.
In Washington on Monday, Deputy State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel spoke out against the court’s actions on Israel. “We continue to believe that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the Palestinian situation,” Patel said.
Furthermore, US House Speaker Mike Johnson called out the ICC in a post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, urging it to “stand down on this immediately.”
“Israel has the right to defend itself from terrorist organizations seeking to destroy it,” he added.