News - World: The US is reportedly pressuring the UK not to drop its legal challenge to the International Criminal Court (ICC)’s right to seek an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes against Palestinians.

Human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson made the claim about the pressure being exercised by the United States in an article published in The Guardian on Wednesday.

In May, the ICC's Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan made a formal request for arrest warrants to be issued against Netanyahu and Israeli minister of military affairs, Yoav Gallant, on charges of war crimes.

Both Netanyahu and Gallant face accusations, including the crimes of “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”

Khan’s request came amid the Israeli regime’s October 7-present war against the Gaza Strip that has so far killed more than 38,240 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured over 88,240 others.

Concomitantly with the war, the regime has been enforcing a near-total siege on the coastal sliver, which has reduced the flow of foodstuffs, medicine, electricity, and water into the Palestinian territory into a trickle.

Reacting to Khan’s request, Britain’s former Conservative government, led by prime minister Rishi Sunak, challenged whether the ICC had any jurisdiction over the Israeli actions in Gaza.

Now, Washington expects Sunak’s successor Keir Starmer to follow the same policy.

Robertson said giving in to the US pressure would be “the first big moral mistake” of Starmer’s premiership.

“The US is not a member of the ICC, and expects the UK to look after its interests there,” he wrote.

The ICC has given the new Labour government until July 26 to decide whether to pursue the legal challenge.

The UK mounted the challenge, although, in 2021, the ICC ruled that it did have jurisdiction over Israeli activity in Palestine.

The challenge is delaying the court’s decision on issuing arrest warrants against the Israeli officials.

Robertson, however, described the legal argument presented by Britain as “preposterous,” saying, “The ICC decided in the 2021 case that this was ‘not pertinent’ to its right to punish crimes in Gaza as Palestine was a member state, so any war crime on its territory fell within the ICC’s remit.”

Source: Press TV

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