The new Republican leader in the Senate threatens sanctions against the ICC for persecuting Netanyahu
The new leader of the Republicans in the US Senate, John Thune, has threatened this Sunday to assert the Republican majority in the Upper House and support a sanctions law against the International Criminal Court (ICC) in retaliation for the request of The Prosecutor’s Office of this body to issue arrest warrants against the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant.
“If the ICC and its prosecutor do not reverse their scandalous and illegal actions of seeking arrest warrants against Israeli officials, the Senate should immediately pass a sanctions law, as the House of Representatives already did in a bipartisan manner,” he pointed out in a message on his social network account X.
The senator from South Dakota has thus alluded to the approval, in May of this year, by the US House of Representatives (lower) of a bill to sanction senior officials of the ICC after the attorney general Karim Khan requested the issuance of arrest warrants against the two Israeli leaders for the alleged commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Palestinian territory.
The Republican has also assured that, if the current majority leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, “does not act” in this regard, “the Republican majority in the Senate will support (its) key ally, Israel, and will make this — and other supporting legislation—a top priority in the next Congress.”
Thune has expressed himself forcefully just a week after the senators of the Republican Party chose him as their new leader in the Upper House, where the party has a majority in this legislature after the elections at the beginning of November, in which Donald Trump was elected president.
Khan announced in May his decision to request the issuance of arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as against the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by Israel; the leader of the group’s military wing, Mohamed Diab al Masri, known as Abu Deif; and the also deceased head of the political arm of the formation, Ismail Haniya, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity following the October 7 attacks by the Islamist group and the subsequent Israeli offensive against the Gaza Strip.
