Norway on Tuesday became the first European country to publicly announce that it will arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant if an arrest warrant ultimately is issued against them by the Hague Tribunal and they land on its territory.
Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said, a day after the dramatic statement by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, that "if an arrest warrant is issued against Netanyahu and Gallant on behalf of the Hague Tribunal, we will be obliged to arrest them if they arrive in Norway."
"It is the court that decides whether to issue an arrest warrant. If so, all the signatory countries must act on it," added the Foreign Minister of Norway, which is the first country to announce on its own initiative that it would carry out the warrants, if they are filed.
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Benjamin Netanyahu and Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide
(Photo: Ronen Zvulun/Reuters, Khaled Desoukie / AFP)
However, this is an idle threat, given that no Israeli prime minister or defense minister will soon visit Norway, which is currently considered - along with Spain and Ireland - to be one of the most hostile countries to Israel in Europe, and relations with it are at an unprecedented low.
Unlike Norway, Britain criticized Khan's decision, and especially the equivalence that it draws between Netanyahu and Gallant and the leaders of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif and Ismail Haniyeh.
On Tuesday night, Minister Benny Gantz, spoke with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, and according to him "thanked him for the important position of Britain in the matter."
"I told him that the decision of the prosecutor in The Hague to apply for arrest warrants against the prime minister and the defense minister of the one and only democracy in the Middle East is a serious distortion and an act of moral blindness," Gantz said of the conversation with Cameron.
Ambassador Jack Lew: "It’s important to remember where this started – it started with Hamas’ attack"
(Central Productions)
