The simmering legal and political tensions over Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank escalated sharply this week, after far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich publicly denounced a secret International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant application filed against him as a formal declaration of war, threatening immediate, harsh retaliation against Palestinian people and communities.
Smotrich made the inflammatory remarks in a prepared speech on Tuesday, confirming earlier reporting published by Middle East Eye (MEE) one day prior. The far-right minister claimed he had been notified overnight that the ICC Office of the Prosecutor had submitted a secret arrest warrant request naming him, which he dismissed by labeling the Hague-based court ‘Anti-Semitic Tribunal’ in a bid to delegitimize its legal process.
Per MEE’s exclusive reporting, the prosecutor’s office filed the application for Smotrich’s arrest last month, over allegations of multiple war crimes and crimes against humanity committed against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The specific charges listed against Smotrich include forced displacement, which is classified as both a war crime and crime against humanity; the unlawful transfer of Israel’s civilian population into occupied territory, a recognized war crime; and charges of persecution and apartheid, both deemed crimes against humanity under international law. If the ICC pre-trial chamber approves the warrant, it will mark the first time an international court has ever issued an arrest warrant for the crime of apartheid against an Israeli official.
Court records and insider sources indicate the application for Smotrich had been finalized for roughly one year before it was formally submitted to judges on 2 April. If approved, Smotrich will become the third senior Israeli official to be wanted by the ICC, following November 2024 warrants issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
In his address, Smotrich doubled down on his hardline stance, arguing that any ICC arrest warrant targeting senior Israeli cabinet members amounts to an act of aggression against the state of Israel. ‘Issuing arrest warrants against the prime minister is a declaration of war. Issuing arrest warrants against the minister of defence and the minister of finance is a declaration of war,’ Smotrich stated. ‘And in the face of a declaration of war, we will fight back with a vengeance.’ He went on to blame the Palestinian Authority for initiating the legal action, accusing it of starting a conflict by cooperating with the ICC to provide evidence supporting the charges.
The minister also reaffirmed he remains unapologetic for his longstanding advocacy for expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, which are widely deemed illegal under international law. He explicitly announced he would use his executive authority to immediately sign an order for the expulsion of Palestinian residents from the village of Khan al-Ahmar in the central West Bank, a community that has faced repeated expulsion threats from Israeli authorities for more than a decade.
‘From today, any economic or otherwise, anything that I can harm within the framework of my powers … will be attacked. Not talk and gimmicks – actions,’ Smotrich added, confirming he would use all levers of his finance minister role to inflict harm on Palestinian interests in retaliation for the ICC application.
There is currently no clear timeline for when ICC judges will issue a ruling on Smotrich’s warrant application. Pre-trial judges at the court typically require several months to review and rule on warrant requests, though timelines have varied widely: the court processed warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in roughly one month, while the applications for Netanyahu and Gallant took six months to approve. This means a final decision on Smotrich’s application could still be months away, as the request has not yet received formal judicial ratification.
MEE also reported last week that an evidence review was held to assess the viability of two additional arrest warrant applications, including one for far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, though neither has yet been formally submitted to the court. Smotrich and Ben Gvir have already faced coordinated international sanctions over their hardline policies and explicit statements advocating for the displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which date back to June 2024. Both politicians reside in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and both have publicly pushed for full Israeli annexation of the occupied territory and the return of Israeli settlers to the Gaza Strip.
In June 2024, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Norway announced coordinated sanctions against the two ministers, freezing any assets they hold within their jurisdictions and imposing entry bans. Multiple other Western countries have since implemented their own restrictions: in July 2024, Slovenia became the first European Union member state to declare both ministers persona non grata, while the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain have implemented national travel bans, with the Dutch restriction applying across the entire 29-nation Schengen Area.
Efforts to impose EU-wide sanctions on Ben Gvir and Smotrich have been stalled for nearly two years. Then-EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell first proposed the measure in August 2024, describing the pair’s statements as ‘incitement to war crimes’, but the proposal failed to pass due to a lack of required unanimity among EU member states. The proposal was revived by current EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas earlier this year, and in September 2024, the European Commission formally put forward a sanctions package that paired a partial suspension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement with targeted sanctions against Hamas leaders, violent Israeli settlers, and the two far-right cabinet ministers. However, when the EU Foreign Affairs Council voted on the package on 11 May 2025, members only agreed to sanction settler organizations and Hamas figures, removing Ben Gvir and Smotrich from the sanctions list after Germany, Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary confirmed they would not support adding the pair.
The United States has maintained consistent opposition to all sanctions against the two ministers, and has actively opposed the ICC’s Israel-related investigations overall. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly urged allied nations to reverse their existing sanctions on Smotrich and Ben Gvir, and the current U.S. administration has imposed its own sanctions on ICC officials in a bid to halt the court’s ongoing probes into alleged Israeli war crimes.