Donald Trump has signed an executive order imposing sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC), the White House confirmed on Thursday. The order accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and its “close ally” Israel, specifically over arrest warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant. The order asserts that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the US or Israel, as neither country is party to the Rome Statute.
Amnesty International’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, described the order as “reckless” and “a brutal step that seeks to undermine and destroy what the international community has painstakingly constructed over decades, if not centuries”.
Trump also doubled down on his proposal for the US to “take ownership” of Gaza, saying the territory would be “turned over” to the US by Israel after its military offensive against Hamas. Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to prepare plans allowing Palestinians “who wish to leave” Gaza to exit, and claimed that Spain, Ireland, and Norway are “legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories”. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said Palestinians in Gaza are “going to have to live somewhere else in the interim”, describing the strip as “not habitable”.
Trump’s Gaza plan drew widespread international condemnation. Egypt’s foreign ministry said it would “squash” the ceasefire and “incite a return of fighting”, while Russia called it “counterproductive”. China’s foreign ministry opposed the forced transfer of people, and Pakistan described the plan as “deeply troubling and unjust”. Iran said it “categorically rejected and condemned” the proposal. The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa), Philippe Lazzarini, warned the agency faces an “existential threat” after Israel banned it, and called Trump’s plan “totally unrealistic”, adding that forced displacement “is an international crime – it’s ethnic cleansing”.
Human Rights Watch warned that the proposal could move the US “from being complicit in war crimes to direct perpetration of atrocities”, noting that forced displacement is a crime against humanity under the Geneva Conventions, to which both Israel and the US are signatories.
