France to continue supporting ICC's actions: Foreign Ministry spokesperson

By Nur Asena Erturk

France will continue supporting the International Criminal Court's actions against Israel, the French Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday following the court's new arrest warrants for Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

The court guarantees “international stability” and must be able to act “in all situations independently and impartially,” Christophe Lemoine told a news conference in Paris.

“We support the court prosecutor’s action who acts in all independence … and the fight against impunity is our priority. We bring continued support to the ICC’s action, our reaction will align with those principles,” he added.

Lemoine, however, noted that the warrants topic was “legally complex,” and avoided saying whether France would implement the warrants.

In a landmark move, the Hague court on Thursday announced it had issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant over war crimes that they are accused of committing in Palestinian territories, including Gaza.

The warrants came as Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza recently entered its second year, having already killed some 44,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and injured over 103,000 others.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing and deliberate blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, pushing the population to the brink of starvation.