Hungary to become first European nation to host PM Netanyahu after ICC arrest warrant

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to arrive in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, on Wednesday evening.

According to an Israeli source close to the prime minister, Netanyahu is expected to discuss, among other matters, potential Hungarian support for U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial Gaza plan, which involves rebuilding the enclave from scratch and resettling its population elsewhere.

Hungary will become the first European country to host Netanyahu since the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant against him and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

Hungary ranks among Israel's closest European allies and Netanyahu has built strong ties with the conservative Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

“Netanyahu is trying to build a coalition of as many countries as possible backing Trump’s plan for Gaza,” the undisclosed source told The Times of Israel.

Last November, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu, accusing him and Gallant of “war crimes, starvation, crimes against humanity” in Gaza.

At the time, Orbán swiftly rejected the ICC’s warrant and pledged to invite Netanyahu to Hungary.

“Today I will invite Israel’s prime minister, Mr. Netanyahu, for a visit to Hungary, and in that invite, I will guarantee him that if he comes, the ICC ruling will have no effect in Hungary, and we will not follow its contents,” Orbán said in November.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó also condemned the ICC’s decision, calling it “shameful and absurd.”

“It is absurd to create an equivalence between members of a democratically elected government and the leader of a terrorist organization,” Szijjártó stated, in reference to the ICC’s comparison between Hamas leaders and officials from the State of Israel.

Israeli leaders across the political spectrum have strongly rejected the ICC’s accusations, emphasizing that the Jewish state is exercising the right of self-defense against Hamas, which is officially designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Israel, among others.

Netanyahu condemned the ICC’s decision as “a black day in the history of nations.”

“The court in The Hague accuses us of a deliberate policy of starvation. This – when we have supplied Gaza with 700,000 tons of food to feed the people of Gaza. That’s 3,200 calories (per day) for every man, woman and child in Gaza… Yet, just in the last few weeks, Israel facilitated the vaccination of 97 percent of the people of Gaza against polio. This doesn’t prevent the court of accusing us of genocide,” Netanyahu stated last November.

The ICC’s controversial ruling on Israeli leaders has divided the free world. Nations like Ireland, Spain and Norway, all vocal critics of the Jewish state, have said they would honor the ICC’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Gallant. Canada has echoed similar sentiments.

In contrast, European nations, including Germany, Poland, and France, have signaled that, for various legal and political reasons, they do not intend to enforce the warrants against Netanyahu.

The Biden administration and the current Trump administration have both condemned the ICC’s hostile conduct toward Israel, while the nation defends itself against Iran and its terror proxies Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

In February, Trump signed an executive order against ICC officials, including ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, for their “baseless arrest warrants” for the Israeli leaders.

“The ICC has no jurisdiction over the United States or Israel, as neither country is a party to the Rome Statute or a member of the ICC,” the executive order states. “Neither country has ever recognized the ICC's jurisdiction, and both nations are thriving democracies with militaries that strictly adhere to the laws of war.”