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Trump Administration Plans Crippling Sanctions on ICC
The International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – President-elect Donald Trump plans to implement devastating sanctions against the International Criminal Court in The Hague immediately after taking office, sources close to the matter disclosed to Israel Hayom. These executive orders could be unveiled as soon as Jan. 21.
The sanctions package will target both individual ICC personnel, including judges and prosecutors, and the institution as a whole. The administration intends to classify the ICC as an organization threatening US interests, employing designation procedures similar to those used by the State Department for terrorist organizations globally. This designation will trigger severe restrictions on anyone involved with the court’s operations.
Financial institutions worldwide will be required to terminate relationships with ICC personnel or face U.S. sanctions themselves. Mirroring actions taken against sanctioned Israeli citizens by the outgoing administration, ICC staff will find themselves unable to perform routine banking operations or use credit cards. Their financial activities will be effectively frozen, with exceptions only for essential needs such as food purchases. Furthermore, all U.S.-based assets belonging to ICC employees and the institution will be frozen.
The incoming administration’s strategy extends beyond unilateral actions, as it plans to secure commitments from U.S. allies to reject cooperation with arrest warrants targeting Israeli officials.
These measures aim to create conditions allowing the court to independently withdraw its arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Officials hope that during appeal proceedings, either Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan or the judges will identify legal grounds to rescind these warrants.
The incoming administration considers the ICC’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant a direct threat to US national security. The incoming officials believe these actions ultimately seek to strip the US and its allies of their ability to mount military defenses against global threats.
Trump administration officials and Republican senators widely view Israel’s situation as a precedent, believing the US could face similar warrants next, leading them to treat these actions against Israeli officials as precursors to targeting American leadership and military command.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who will lead the Senate Intelligence Committee starting this week, said that “the ICC is a ‘kangaroo court’ and Karim Khan is a deranged zealot. Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these lawless warrants. Let me give everyone a friendly reminder: The US law on ICC is known as the ‘Hague Invasion Act,’ and there’s a reason for that. Think about it.”
Originally published by Israel Hayom.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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