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Trump’s order is seen as a response to the Court’s decision to issue arrest warrants last November for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Netanyahu, a longtime Trump ally, this week became the first world leader to visit the U.S. president after his inauguration and spent Thursday meeting with lawmakers in the country’s Congress.
Costa similarly criticized Trump’s action, which, he wrote, “undermines the international criminal justice system as a whole.”
Costa and von der Leyen have taken a cautious communications approach to Trump since his reelection and have so far avoided direct confrontations with the U.S. president.
The Council president met with ICC President Judge Tomoko Akane on Thursday, just hours before Trump signed an executive order to impose asset freezes and travel bans against ICC staff and their family members if they are determined to be involved in efforts to investigate U.S. citizens and the country’s allies.
Trump this week declared that Palestinians should be removed from Gaza when hostilities conclude so that the U.S. can “own” the coastal enclave and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”