AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly skipping an event marking liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland next month out of fear of being arrested for the war crimes against the Palestinians in war-wracked Gaza.
Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita published the report on Friday, saying information obtained by the daily showed that Israeli officials had not asked Netanyahu to join the January 27 ceremony.
Last month, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants against Netanyahu and ousted war minister Yoav Gallant after charging them with committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli regime has been waging a war of genocide since last October that has featured using starvation as a method of warfare.
The brutal military onslaught has so far claimed the lives of more than 45,200 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
In its verdict, the court said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that both Gallant and Netanyahu “intentionally and knowingly” deprived Palestinians in Gaza of basic needs like food and water, adding that their actions geared towards destroying the conditions of life in the coastal sliver constituted crimes against humanity.
Poland is a party to the Rome Statute that established the court.
Affirming the country’s commitment to the tribunal and its decisions, Deputy Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski has said, “We are obliged to respect the decisions of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”
The Polish daily also pointed to Poland’s commitment to the ICC Statute, noting, “They (the Israeli officials) knew what Warsaw's response [to Tel Aviv’s potential request for joining the liberation ceremony] would be.”
The paper also said Israeli president Isaac Herzog did not plan to attend the event either.
Earlier this month, however, the United States, the Israeli regime’s biggest ally that has backed it up with billions of dollars in military support during the war, welcomed Gallant on its soil.
Gallant met with US President Joe Biden’s West Asia envoy, Brett McGurk, at the White House on December 10, posting information about the meeting on social media and attaching pictures of the duo’s shaking hands joyously.
....................
End/ 257