The House voted in favor of a bill that would impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) over proposed arrest warrants against Israeli officials.
The bill would ban ICC officials involved in the arrest warrants from entering the US, revoke any visas they hold and restrict them to property transactions in the US.
The measure, authored by Rep. Chip Roy, passed 247-155. A significant number of Democrats supported the legislation that President Biden opposes: 42.
Just last week, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., were working together on a bipartisan ICC response.
A breakdown in talks between Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats occurred when the White House told Democrats in Congress to roll back sanctions, a source familiar told DailyMail.com.
The House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill that would impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) over proposed arrest warrants against Israeli officials, including Netanyahu.
“We fundamentally reject the ICC Prosecutor’s request for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week. “However, in our view, sanctions against the ICC are not an effective or appropriate path forward.”
Last month, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – in addition to two Hamas leaders – bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes during the war on Gaza.
It is the first time that the ICC has targeted a leader of an American ally.
Last month, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – in addition to two Hamas leaders – bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes during the war on Gaza.
The US is not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, established in 2002. The country does not directly fund the criminal court.
Khan said last month that he formally applied for the arrest warrants and now a panel of three judges must approve them and allow a case to proceed, which could take months.
Israel is also not a party to the ICC, so even if arrest warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant are not at immediate risk of prosecution. But it could restrict their travel within any of the 124 ICC member countries.
It comes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited by both House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to a joint session of Congress – a move that sparked progressive outrage.
Roy called the ICC “an enormous threat to American sovereignty.”
Top House Democrats have not spoken against the bill.
“This bill makes a mockery of the rules-based international order that America helped build,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said as the bill passed the Rules Committee.
Some pro-Israel Democrats supported the measure.
The White House opposed the measure in a policy statement on Monday, but made no explicit veto threat.
“There are more effective ways to defend Israel, preserve America’s positions on the ICC, and promote international justice and accountability, and the administration stands ready to work with Congress on those options,” the statement read.
However, the White House has not defined those other options and the House has continued with party-line sanctions.
The measure gives the president the unilateral authority to drop sanctions if the ICC stops arresting American individuals or allies.
Netanyahu called the arrest warrants “a moral outrage of historic proportions.” Israel, he said, “is waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that has committed the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
He called chief prosecutor Khan one of the “great anti-Semites of modern times.”
Biden called the arrest warrants “outrageous” and said there was “no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”
Hamas, in turn, also demanded that the ICC withdraw his arrest warrants and accused Khan of “equating the victim with the executioner.”
In a recent interview with Time Magazine, Biden was asked whether Netanyahu is “prolonging the war for his own self-preservation.”
“There’s every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” Biden said.