Why France offered Netanyahu guarantees over ICC arrest warrant

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been dealt a harsh blow by one of its founding states, which also prides itself on being the “homeland of human rights.” On Wednesday, November 27, France issued a cryptic statement undermining both the authority of this judicial body and the arrest warrant issued six days earlier by its judges against Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the context of the war in Gaza. According to corroborating sources, this statement was meant to avoid severing ties with the Israeli prime minister, who contested the role of mediator claimed by Paris in the search for a hard-fought ceasefire in Lebanon, announced on Tuesday evening by Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron.

After several confusing comments, France clarified its position on the arrest warrant issued for the head of the Israeli government by the ICC. While saying that it “will comply with its international obligations” and that the Rome Statute, the Court’s founding text, “demands full cooperation with the International Criminal Court,” the communiqué issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed that this text “also stipulates that a State cannot be required to act inconsistently with its obligations under international law with respect to the immunities of States not party to the ICC.” This was a reference to article 98 of the Rome Statute. The Foreign Ministry continued: “Such immunities apply to Prime Minister Netanyahu and the other ministers concerned and will have to be taken into account should the ICC request of us their arrest and surrender.” As Israel has not signed the Rome Statute, it has not waived the immunities of its current leaders, unlike the 124 ICC states parties, including France.

This so-called clarification came as all the more of a thunderclap, as it was delivered against a backdrop of recurring tensions between the French and Israeli governments, following weeks of negotiations to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon. In the last stretch of these talks, the ICC’s announcement of the arrest warrants on November 21 further strained the often acrimonious exchanges between Macron and Netanyahu. So much so that Netanyahu, according to a highly-placed source, asked the French president over the phone on Friday to speak out against the Court’s decision. He was very insistent and reiterated a threat he had made in recent months: to challenge France’s mediation efforts in Lebanon, and exclude it from the committee overseeing a potential ceasefire, against the advice of Beirut and Washington, which insisted instead on keeping Paris on board.

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