The US House of Representatives votes in favor of a bill to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court over Israeli arrest warrants Donald Trump news

The US House of Representatives voted in favor of a bill to impose sanctions on the International Criminal Court in response to the arrest warrant it issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former Israeli Defense Minister. Yoav Galant.

Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives passed the “Anti-Shared Court Act” by an overwhelming majority, 243 votes to 140, on Thursday, in a sign of strong support for Israel.

Forty-five Democrats joined 198 Republicans in supporting the bill. No Republican voted against it.

The bill now heads to the Senate, where the Republican majority was sworn in earlier this month.

the legislation It proposes to impose sanctions on any foreigner who assists the ICC in its attempts to investigate, detain, or prosecute a U.S. citizen or the citizen of an allied nation that does not recognize the court’s authority.

Neither the United States nor Israel are parties to the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court.

The penalties will include freezing real estate assets, as well as denying entry visas to any foreigners who contribute materially or financially to the court’s efforts.

“America is passing this law because a sham court seeks to arrest the prime minister of our great ally Israel,” Representative Brian Mast, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a speech before the vote on Thursday.

The vote, the first of its kind since the new Congress convened last week, confirmed the strong support among President-elect Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans for the Israeli government, despite its ongoing war in Gaza.

This conflict has led to the deaths of more than 46,000 Palestinians since its beginning in October 2023, many of them women and children. UN experts have condemned Israeli tactics in Gaza as “consistent with the characteristics of genocide.”

This prompted International Criminal Court prosecutors last May to issue arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.

In response, US lawmakers threatened retaliation from the International Criminal Court. In a letter sent to outgoing US President Joe Biden in May, dozens of human rights groups urged him to reject calls for punitive action.

“Acting on these calls would seriously harm the interests of all victims globally and the ability of the United States government to uphold human rights and the cause of justice.” books at that time.

This week, another group of human rights organizations issued another statement letter Before the vote Thursday, they denounced the House bill as an attack on an “independent judicial institution.”

They wrote that imposing sanctions on the court “would jeopardize the ability of desperate victims in all court investigations to access justice, weaken the credibility of sanctions tools in other contexts, and put the United States at odds with its closest allies.”

The letter warned that imposing “asset freezes and entry restrictions” on ICC allies would bring the United States “the stigma of bias toward impunity over justice.”

However, the US Senate, led by Majority Leader John Thune, has promised to quickly consider the law so that Trump can sign it into law after he takes office on January 20.

In 2020, during his first term, Trump punished Senior ICC leaders on the court’s investigations into US crimes in Afghanistan and Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories. President Biden later lifted those sanctions.

The International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, is a permanent court that can try individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.

The State of Palestine has been a member since 2015, and the court announced for the first time an investigation into crimes committed by Israeli and Hamas officials there in 2019.

Although Israel is not a party to the International Criminal Court, the court has jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of a member state, regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators.

The United States has supported the Court at times, for example, when the ICC’s top prosecutor sought to make a request Arrest warrant to Russian President Vladimir Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine. Russia, like Israel and the United States, is not a member of the court.

Karim Khan, the prosecutor who issued the arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, said his decision was in line with the court’s approach in all its cases, and noted that arrest warrants can prevent ongoing crimes.