President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday placing sanctions on the International Criminal Court, saying that his administration would “impose tangible and significant consequences” on people who work on investigations that threaten the national security of the United States and its allies, including Israel.
The court faced backlash from the U.S. and Israel in November over its decision to issue arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the course of its conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
Mr. Trump’s order said that the court’s actions against Israel and its preliminary investigations concerning the United States “set a dangerous precedent, directly endangering current and former United States personnel” by exposing them to harassment and the risk of international criminal prosecution.
“The I.C.C. has, without a legitimate basis, asserted jurisdiction over and opened preliminary investigations concerning personnel of the United States and certain of its allies, including Israel, and has further abused its power” in issuing the warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, the order said.
The order said the sanctions could include the blocking of purchases of property and assets, and barring I.C.C. officials and their immediate family members from entering the United States.
Neither the United States nor Israel recognizes the I.C.C.’s jurisdiction, but the court accepted Palestine as a member in 2015, giving it jurisdiction over international crimes that take place in Gaza.
Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization based in New York, called the sanctions a direct attack on the rule of law.
“The broad scope of the executive order is intended to embolden perpetrators across the world and to inhibit the pursuit of international justice against the most powerful,” he said in a statement.
Mr. Trump hosted Mr. Netanyahu this week at the White House, where they sought to project a united front in Israel’s war against Hamas and discussed what would happen in Gaza in the conflict’s aftermath.
During the visit, Mr. Trump made a stunning announcement — revealed to Mr. Netanyahu only shortly before — that the U.S. would seek to take over Gaza, permanently displace its two million Palestinian residents and redevelop the territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” The proposal drew global condemnation, and experts said such a measure would amount to ethnic cleansing and likely violate international law.
The president’s executive order on the I.C.C. comes after Democrats recently blocked a bill in the Senate that would have imposed sanctions on officials affiliated with the tribunal court over its actions against the Israeli officials. Many Democrats argued that the legislation was far too broad and could apply not only to a wide range of personnel at the court, but also to American companies working with it.
In a statement, a spokesman for Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, signaled support for the order, saying that Mr. Schumer believed the court needed to be “reformed,” and had a “bias against Israel.” The statement said the president’s directive left out “problematic extraneous provisions” unrelated to Israel that were included in the bill Democrats had rejected.
The I.C.C. issued the arrest warrants for the Israeli officials late last year, as Israel repeatedly blocked the flow of wartime humanitarian aid to Gaza. The court alleged that Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival, including food, water, and medicine and medical supplies, as well as fuel and electricity.”
As part of the same action, the court issued an arrest warrant for Muhammad Deif, a top Hamas military commander, accusing him of crimes against humanity, including murder, hostage-taking and sexual violence. Mr. Deif’s death in an Israeli airstrike was recently confirmed.
The court had also sought to issue warrants for Hamas’s top leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, and its political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, but they had been confirmed to have been killed by the time the other warrants were issued.
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