Netanyahu asked Biden to keep Trump's sanctions on ICC: Report
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly asked US President Joe Biden to maintain his predecessor’s sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has over the past years been investigating the Tel Aviv regime’s war crimes in the Palestinian territories.
Citing Israeli officials, the Virginia-based Axios news website reported on Wednesday that Netanyahu had made the request during his first phone call with Biden last week.
The report said Israeli officials had argued that Washington should maintain the sanctions imposed by the administration of former US President Donald Trump as leverage against investigations in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip as well as Afghanistan, where the US itself is accused of having committed war crimes.
The sanctions were also discussed in a phone call between Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to the report by Axios.
In a major decision earlier this month, a pre-trial chamber of the ICC determined that The Hague-based tribunal had jurisdiction to investigate the atrocities committed by the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip since 1967.
Michael Lynk, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, hailed the decision and said the ruling “opens the door” for justice in Palestine.
The US is also currently being investigated by the ICC for war crimes in Afghanistan, and when Trump was in office, he imposed sanctions on the ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, as well as Phakiso Mochochoko, the ICC director of jurisdiction, in order to block them from carrying out their investigation or being able to travel to the United States.
The Biden administration has signaled a less confrontational line but has not said whether it will drop the sanctions against Bensouda, who has called the measures “unacceptable.”
Israel occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip — territories the Palestinians want for their future state — during the six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967. It later had to withdraw from Gaza.
About 700,000 Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds since then. The international community views the settlements as illegal under international law but has done little to pressure the Israeli regime to freeze or reverse its policies.
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