Israeli Officials Face ICC Arrest Warrants Even after ‘Generous’ Ceasefire Offer

News broke Tuesday of a new ceasefire-hostage release proposal between Israel and Hamas in the midst of reports that the International Criminal Court (ICC) may issue arrest warrants for top Israeli officials, which experts say is exerting unfair pressure on the Middle East’s sole democracy to stop defending itself and capitulate to international demands for a ceasefire.

CNN reported that Hamas is considering a new framework arranged by Israel that calls for the release of 20 to 33 Israeli hostages in exchange for a pause in hostilities in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken characterized the proposal as “extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel,” since “Israel has agreed to accept fewer hostages in the first phase after Hamas dropped its offer to fewer than 20 people earlier this month.”

However, this did not stop the ICC from reportedly preparing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and other senior military officials over alleged war crimes, with an Israeli official telling NBC News that the warrants could be issued “as early as this week.”

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) quickly blasted the ICC on Monday, calling the warrants “disgraceful” and “lawless” and calling for the Biden administration to “immediately and unequivocally demand that the ICC stand down.” “Instead of wrongly targeting Israel, the ICC should pursue charges against Iran and its terror proxies, including Hamas, for engaging in horrific war crimes,” he added.

For its part, a Biden administration official stated that “the ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation and we do not support its investigation.”

Still, as Caroline Glick, senior contributing editor at the Jewish News Syndicate, made clear during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Monday, the ICC’s actions are part of a mounting, multi-faceted pressure campaign on Israel not to invade Rafah, the final Hamas stronghold in the southern Gaza Strip, which Netanyahu has vowed to invade “with or without a deal.”

“[T]he United States is pushing very hard to get a ceasefire,” she noted. “… [R]ight now we have three brigades that are poised to go into the town of Rafah and take over Hamas’s final outpost in Gaza and take over the international border with Egypt. … [W]eirdly, the United States seems to be on the side of Egypt and Hamas in this and does not, under any circumstances, apparently want Israel to carry out this operation, without … which Israel will lose the war. [It’s a] very distressing situation all around. We have to do this operation in order to win. And it seems that the combined powers of the entire international community are pushing as hard as they can to prevent us from doing so.”

Regarding the ICC’s arrest warrants, “the timing here is key,” she pointed out. “That … along with all of the other things that are going on with us, European pressure, U.N. pressure, Egyptian pressure, Hamas pressure, and psychological warfare.

Glick continued, “[I]t was expected that [the warrants] would be issued today, and now the anticipation is that they’re going to be issued on Thursday. And then there’s another aspect to this, which is that they can issue and seal arrest warrants and not tell the subjects of those arrest warrants that they are under arrest warrant. And then you travel abroad and essentially are kidnapped because you’re nabbed at an airport without even knowing that somebody wants to arrest you.”

Glick went on to explain how the ICC’s actions could affect far more than senior level Israeli officials. “[W]hat we’ve come to understand is that the threat is not only to the prime minister and the defense minister and the chief of staff of the IDF … it’s also that it will open up a cascade, and then we’ll see division commanders and brigade commanders and even regular reserve soldiers who carry out operations in Rafah [that will] end up getting arrested. [T]he fear isn’t so much [about] the people … at the top level of government and the military, but rather the people who are in the mid-level or even just line soldiers. … The chilling effect [will be] upon those who serve in the IDF, which is pretty much everybody in Israel that’s of age.”

Glick further argued how “insane” it is that the ICC is labeling Israel as the “war criminals” in the battle that came to their doorstep on October 7.

“We’re fighting a war for our survival against genocidal terrorists who hide behind civilians and who carried out the largest terrorist attack against Israelis in history on October 7th and continue to hold 133 hostages in Gaza, both dead and alive,” she gravely observed. “We don’t know how many are dead and how many are alive, because Hamas refuses to tell us who’s alive. So, I mean, this is all psychological torture and a war of genocide against our country. And here we’re being told that we’re war criminals for trying to prosecute this to victory. It’s a very shocking set of affairs that we’re faced with today.”

Glick concluded by emphasizing the crucial role that President Biden could play in stopping the ICC’s agenda.

“[T]he only person who can stop this is President Biden,” she argued. “President Biden stood behind the appointment of the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, and if Biden put his foot down and said this cannot stand, then it wouldn’t. Just as when President Trump issued the executive order causing … sanctions against the ICC if they went against U.S. military personnel or allied military personnel, so too Biden could do it tomorrow if he wanted or today, but he hasn’t done so.”