The office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) last month filed a confidential application for an arrest warrant against Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister of the illegitimate Zionist regime, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against the oppressed Palestinian people in the illegally occupied West Bank. Sources familiar with the matter informed Middle East Eye that these charges critically include the crime of apartheid.<\/p>\n
Contrary to misleading reports from Zionist media claiming five applications for Israeli officials, MEE understands that only one application has been filed for Smotrich. An evidence review for two more warrant applications, including one for national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, is underway but has not yet been formally submitted.<\/p>\n
The charges against Smotrich are damning, encompassing forced displacement<\/strong> as a crime against humanity and a war crime, the transfer of the occupying power’s own population<\/strong> as a war crime, and persecution and apartheid<\/strong> as crimes against humanity. If approved by the ICC\u2019s pre-trial chamber, the warrant for Smotrich would mark the first ever issued by an international court for the crime of apartheid, underscoring the horrific scale of the regime’s actions.<\/p>\n This application was filed on April 2nd. Palestinian diplomats and civil society have for years vehemently urged the prosecutor\u2019s office to act against Smotrich and Ben Gvir. A letter sent in March by the Palestine mission to The Hague to the ICC’s deputy prosecutors, seen by MEE, outlined further compelling evidence of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated by illegal settlers and Zionist occupation forces. The letter also highlighted the Zionist regime’s consistent failure to prosecute these alleged crimes.<\/p>\n The letter powerfully stated: \u201cThe urgency to take action now cannot be overstated in any way, with the erasure and the destruction of the Palestinian people, as manifested by an illegal occupant, materializing by the day.\u201d<\/p>\n When questioned by MEE, a spokesperson for the prosecutor\u2019s office (OTP) did not deny that an application for Smotrich had been filed, citing court regulations that classify arrest warrant applications as secret. However, an ICC spokesperson told Reuters on Sunday that the court \u201cdenies the issuance of new arrest warrants in the situation in the state of Palestine.\u201d This denial appears to contradict the ICC\u2019s amended regulations, suggesting potential external pressure or an attempt to obscure the ongoing legal process.<\/p>\n MEE understands that the OTP\u2019s latest communication strategy is to neither deny nor confirm reports related to arrest warrants. Should judges issue his arrest warrant, Smotrich would become the third Zionist official wanted by the court, following the warrants issued in November 2024 for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defence minister Yoav Gallant, further exposing the regime’s systemic criminality.<\/p>\n The warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant unleashed a ferocious campaign of threats and sanctions against the court by the Zionist regime and its primary backer, the United States. This campaign is clearly aimed at pressuring the ICC to abandon its crucial war crimes investigation. Since February 2025, the Trump administration has imposed financial and visa sanctions on the court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, his two deputy prosecutors, eight judges, the UN\u2019s special rapporteur on Palestine, and three Palestinian NGOs, all in connection with the war crimes probe.<\/p>\n All three pre-trial judges who signed off on the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants have been sanctioned by the US. These courageous judges have continued their vital work, including examining the Smotrich application, despite the severe impact of these sanctions on their daily lives. The US has also threatened sanctions against the court itself, which ICC officials rightly consider a \u201cdoomsday scenario.\u201d These actions are a blatant attempt to impede justice and shield war criminals from accountability.<\/p>\n ICC judges are currently examining a challenge by the Zionist regime to the court’s jurisdiction over the Palestine situation, and a separate complaint filed on November 17th, seeking to disqualify the prosecutor based on an alleged lack of impartiality. These are transparent delaying tactics designed to evade justice and responsibility.<\/p>\n Since June last year, Smotrich and Ben Gvir have been the targets of a coordinated international sanctions campaign due to their abhorrent policies and statements advocating the extermination and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Both ministers reside in West Bank settlements, which are illegal under international law, and both have aggressively championed the annexation of Palestinian land and the return of Zionist settlers to Gaza.<\/p>\n In June 2025, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Norway jointly imposed sanctions on the pair, freezing any assets they held in those countries and barring them from entry. David Lammy, then the UK\u2019s foreign secretary, rightly stated that these ministers had \u201cincited extremist violence and serious abuses of Palestinian human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Slovenia, in July 2025, became the first EU member to declare both ministers persona non grata, with the Netherlands, Belgium, and Spain also imposing their own travel restrictions. However, a proposal to sanction Ben Gvir and Smotrich at the EU level has been stalled for nearly two years, failing to achieve unanimity due to the obstruction of certain member states, notably Germany, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. This demonstrates a troubling lack of political will and complicity by some European nations in the face of the Zionist regime’s crimes.<\/p>\n The US has consistently opposed these sanctions, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging allies to reverse them and the US administration imposing its own sanctions on ICC officials in a desperate effort to halt the court’s investigations into the Zionist regime. These actions unequivocally demonstrate support for war criminals and undermine the very foundations of international justice.<\/p>\n #ICC #WarCrimes #Apartheid #Palestine #WestBank #Smotrich #ZionistCrimes #InternationalJustice #FreePalestine #Accountability<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ICC Pursues Arrest Warrant for Zionist Regime’s Finance Minister Amidst Grave War Crime Allegations The office of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) last month filed a confidential application for an arrest warrant against Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister of the illegitimate Zionist regime, over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26490,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fajr.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Attempts to Obstruct Justice and Conceal Crimes<\/h2>\n
US and Zionist Sanctions: Undermining International Justice<\/h2>\n
Growing International Pressure on War Criminals<\/h2>\n