The United States was accused of pressuring the new Labor government so that it would not drop the legal challenge submitted by the government of former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak regarding the right of the International Criminal Court to request the issuance of an arrest warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu on charges of committing war crimes, according to the British newspaper “The Guardian”. .

It is noteworthy that the previous Conservative government questioned last May whether the International Criminal Court had any jurisdiction over Israeli actions in Gaza. In 2021, the International Criminal Court ruled that it has jurisdiction over Israeli activity in the Palestinian territories.

The International Criminal Court gave the new Labor government until July 26 to decide whether to continue the legal challenge. It did so after the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber ruled on June 26 that it would allow the UK and other interested parties to submit submissions on jurisdiction. States and other interested parties were given until Friday to submit their submissions to the court.

Human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson made the claim about US pressure on the Labor Party in a Guardian article published on Wednesday, in which he also warned that giving in to US pressure would be the "first major moral mistake" of Sir Keir Starmer's prime ministership. “The United States is not a member of the ICC,” he writes, “and expects the United Kingdom to look after its interests there.”

It was expected that the issue of the International Criminal Court’s request to issue an arrest warrant would be raised during a meeting between Starmer and US President Joe Biden in Washington, the first between the two men.

Labor officials told the Guardian last weekend that the opposition Labor Party had rejected the Conservatives' legal challenge to the ICC's jurisdiction and its policy remained unchanged in government, but did not say whether the claim would be withdrawn as a result.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy is expected to travel to the region next Monday to face what could be tough scrutiny of Labour's policies, including arms sales.

The argument presented by the British Foreign Office to the International Criminal Court, and which Israel was the first to present, is that the Oslo Accords reached between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak during the period from 1993 to 1995, and which were reached with the help of Norwegian mediators, prevent... Palestine from the trial of Israelis.

“The ICC decided in a 2021 case that this was ‘irrelevant’ to its right to punish crimes in Gaza because Palestine was a member state and therefore any war crime on its territory fell within its scope,” notes Robertson, who describes the legal argument as implausible. It is considered the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.”

“The ICC did not even exist in 1995 (it was not established until 2002), and the idea that a temporary clause in a moribund negotiation 30 years ago could prevent it from acting on violations of international criminal law now is preposterous,” Robertson wrote. .

He added: “Israel’s argument, which the UK has adopted (so far), is that Palestine is prohibited from prosecuting Israelis, and this means that it cannot ‘delegate’ such prosecutions to the ICC. This is wrong because the ICC Prosecutor is not A representative of Palestine in any way.”

It is noteworthy that Karim Khan is an independent prosecutor, who collected the evidence that he will present to the court to ask it to issue an arrest warrant, and he has no connection to the Palestinian authorities.

“If the argument adopted by the UK is correct, there will be nothing to prevent the IDF from lining up Palestinian children and executing them in close proximity,” Robertson explained. “There will be no accountability for any crime against humanity they may commit.”

Given the legal challenge, a decision from the ICC on whether to issue arrest warrants is unlikely until next August at the earliest.