Formal inquiry to U.S. Government follows public effort by Biden administration to block arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Gallant

July 16, 2024, New York – Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking all internal communications of the Biden administration related to the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into crimes committed by the Israeli government during its war on Gaza and, specifically, efforts to block accountability at The Hague-based court including through pressure campaigns against the new Labour government in the United Kingdom.

On May 20, ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan submitted an application for arrest warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed since at least October 8, 2023. As the FOIA request details, Netanyahu and Gallant expressed genocidal intent even before overseeing a U.S.-enabled campaign that has killed an estimated 38,664 Palestinians in Gaza, 15,000 of them children, and injured over 89,000 others. 

President Biden called the move by Khan  “outrageous,” which Secretary of Defense Austin echoed in a call with Gallant, and Secretary of State Blinken told lawmakers that the administration would consider sanctions against the ICC. On June 4, the House passed a bill that would sanction non-U.S. citizens—and their immediate family members—involved in ICC prosecutions of citizens of the U.S. and its allies.

Then, on June 27th, in what appears to be an attempt at delay, the U.K. requested time to submit an amicus brief on whether the ICC has jurisdiction to prosecute the Israeli officials for the crimes in question. The ICC granted the request and a subsequent extension, until July 26th, even though it had already affirmed ICC jurisdiction over Gaza and the West Bank in a 2021 ruling. In its FOIA request, the Center for Constitutional Rights asserted the public’s right to know what role the Biden administration played in the U.K. request and other attempts to interfere with the court. Because the U.S. is not a party to the ICC, the organization seeks information that could indicate whether the U.K. is acting as the U.S.’s proxy.

“For decades, despite escalating atrocity crimes by Israeli forces against Palestinians, the United States has persistently undermined and interfered with international justice efforts focused on holding Israeli officials accountable,” said Brad Parker, Associate Director of Policy at the Center for Constitutional Rights and representative for Palestinian victims before the ICC. “Now, amid an ongoing genocide, that systemic impunity enjoyed by Israeli officials and provided by the U.S. is threatened. The United Kingdom appears to be doing the Biden administration's bidding in an attempt to forestall the issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.”

When Israel began its latest assault on Gaza, the ICC had an existing investigation into the situation in Palestine, with a mandate covering crimes committed since June 13, 2014, the start date of one of Israel’s previous major assaults on Gaza. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented Palestinian victims in the ICC investigation, is representing a group of Palestinians, Palestinian human rights organizations, and Palestinian Americans who are suing President Biden, Secretary Blinken, and Defense Secretary Austin in a U.S. federal court for their failure to prevent and complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

In that case the district court judge described Israel’s assault on Gaza as “plausibly” constituting genocide, echoing the historic ruling by the International Court of Justice.

Although genocide was not among the charges cited in the ICC arrest warrant applications, Khan said he had collected evidence showing that “Israel has intentionally and systematically deprived the civilian population in all parts of Gaza of objects indispensable to human survival” – one of the underlying acts of genocide.

U.S. efforts to delay or halt the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant emerge from a history of U.S. interference with ICC investigations into the United States and its allies. In 2020, in response to the ICC’s investigations in Palestine and in Afghanistan, then-President Trump imposed sanctions on ICC officials. Biden lifted those sanctions in 2021, but now that the ICC is looking into crimes his administration has enabled, he has renewed U.S. interference with the court. Today's FOIA request seeks documents pertaining to that interference.

Read the request here.