Those who have issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin may not hesitate to issue an arrest warrant for someone like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an international legal expert said.
In a report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, writer Sam Sokol said the ICC's recent decision is an indication of its willingness to take action against leaders of powerful non-member states in a way it has never dared before, raising the likelihood that Israeli leaders will be sought indicted in the future.
The newspaper quoted an expert in international law at Tel Aviv University's Buchman School of Law, Iliaf Liblich, as saying that Putin's arrest warrant "increases the risks to the Israeli leadership."
"They have shown the political will to confront the president of one of the most powerful countries in the world that can respond in uncharacteristic ways, including violence," the expert said, nearly coinciding with former Russian Vice President Dmitry Medvedev's veiled threat to hit the court with a hypersonic missile.
If the court dared to issue such an order against Putin, Liplich believes that then they "will not hesitate to issue an arrest warrant against someone like Netanyahu," adding that "at the legal level, the court has made it clear that it "does not believe that heads of state, which are not members of the court, enjoy personal immunity before the ICC."
Although Israel is not a member of the court and says that the ICC does not have the authority to investigate crimes committed inside that country, this court ruled in 2019 that it has jurisdiction in the Palestinian territories, and in 2021 it approved a request to open legal proceedings against Israel and Hamas on suspicion of war crimes.
Israel may not have systematically abducted children, but some of its actions are comparable to those of Russia, including the transfer of some of its residents to the occupied West Bank, Lieblich said, adding that some of the legislative initiatives promoted by the current Israeli government could attract the attention of the ICC.
For Lieblich, one of the main risk factors at the moment remains pushing the Israeli government to undermine the independence of the Israeli judiciary, a move that Lieplich says "enhances the chances of ICC intervention."