House votes to slap sanctions on the ICC after 'outrageous' arrest warrant for Israel's Netanyahu

The House voted to pass a bill that would institute sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its proposed arrest warrants of Israeli officials. 

The bill would block ICC officials involved in the warrants from entering the U.S., would revoke any visas they hold and restrict them from property transactions in the U.S. 

The measure, written by Rep. Chip Roy, passed 247-155. A significant number of Democrats supported the legislation that President Biden is against: 42. 

Just last week Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., were working together on a bipartisan ICC response. 

A breakdown in talks between Republicans and pro-Israel Democrats occurred when the White House told Democrats in Congress to back off sanctions, a source familiar told DailyMail.com. 

'We fundamentally reject the ICC prosecutor's application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders,' White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week. 'Sanctions on the ICC, however, we do not believe is an effective or an appropriate path forward.' 

Last month ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said there were 'reasonable grounds' to believe Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant - in addition to two Hamas leaders - bore 'criminal responsibility' for alleged war crimes during the war on Gaza.

It's the first time the ICC has targeted a leader of a U.S. ally. 

The U.S. is not a state party of the Rome Statute of the ICC, founded in 2002. It does not directly fund the criminal court. 

Khan said he is formally seeking the warrants last month and now a three-judge panel must approve them and allow a case to proceed, which could take months. 

Israel is also not a party of the ICC, so even if arrest warrants are issued, Netanyahu and Gallant do not face any immediate risk of prosecution. But it could limit their travel within any of the 124 countries that are signed on to the ICC.

It comes after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited by both House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.,  to address a joint session of Congress - a move that prompted progressive outcries. 

Roy called the ICC 'a massive threat to US sovereignty.' 

Top House Democrats did not whip against the bill.

'This bill makes a mockery of the rules-based international order that America helped build,' ranking member Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said when the bill passed out of the Rules Committee. 

Some pro-Israel Democrats backed the measure. 

The White House opposed the measure in a policy statement on Monday, but did not issue an explicit veto threat. 

'There are more effective ways to defend Israel, preserve U.S. positions on the ICC, and promote international justice and accountability, and the Administration stands ready to work with the Congress on those options,' the statement reads. 

The White House has not, however, defined those other options and the House moved ahead with party-line sanctions. 

The measure gives the president unilateral authority to drop the sanctions if the ICC stops trying to arrest U.S. individuals or allies. 

Netanyahu called the arrest warrants 'a moral outrage of historic proportions.' Israel, he said, is 'waging a just war against Hamas, a genocidal terrorist organization that perpetrated the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.'

He called chief prosecutor Khan one of the 'great antisemites in modern times.' 

Biden called the arrest warrants 'outrageous' and said there was 'no equivalence - none - between Israel and Hamas.' 

Hamas, in turn, also demanded the ICC rescind its arrest warrants and accused Khan of 'equating the victim with the executioner.' 

In a recent interview with Time Magazine, Biden was asked whether Netanyahu is 'prolonging the war for his own self-preservation.' 

'There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,' said Biden.