While Hungary is a signatory to the ICC, Viktor Orban said that he was “shocked” by the court’s “shameful decision.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Hungary in the early hours of Thursday morning for a four-day visit at the invitation of Hungarian premier Viktor Orban.
“Welcome to Budapest, #BenjaminNetanyahu!” Hungarian Defense Minister Kristof Szalay-Bobrovniczky posted to social media, greeting Netanyahu at the airport with full military honors.
Orban invited Netanyahu in November of last year, a day after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against the Israeli premier and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant.
Although Hungary is a signatory to the ICC and obliged to act on its warrants, Orban wrote in a Nov. 22 letter to Netanyahu that he was “shocked” by the court’s “shameful decision.”
He vowed it would have “no impact whatsoever on the Hungarian-Israeli alliance and friendship” and extended an invitation to Netanyahu, promising his country “will ensure your safety and freedom.”
The ICC has no enforcement arm of its own and relies on member states to carry out its warrants.
Orban told Hungarian public broadcaster Kossuth Radio that the ICC decision was “fundamentally wrong” and an “outrageously brazen” political decision that would lead to “the discrediting of international law,” The New York Times reported at the time.
The ICC issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least Oct. 8, 2023, until at least May 20, 2024, the day the prosecution filed the applications for warrants of arrest.
In a separate statement, the court ordered the arrest of Mohammed Deif, the supreme commander of Hamas’s military wing, who according to the Israel Defense Forces was killed in an airstrike on July 13.
Netanyahu wants to undermine the ICC’s decision by “flying to places where there’s no risk of arrest, and in doing so, he’s also paving the way to normalize his future travels,” Moshe Klughaft, an international strategic consultant and former advisor to Netanyahu, told AFP.
“His ultimate goal is to regain the ability to travel wherever he wants,” he said.
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