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Germany’s election winner Friedrich Merz has told Benjamin Netanyahu that he would be invited to visit the European country despite an outstanding arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office.
Merz, who is widely expected to become the next German chancellor, told journalists on Monday that he had spoken with Netanyahu and said he would find the “ways and means” for him to visit Germany.
He did not elaborate on how the country, a party to the Rome Statute that established the ICC, would comply with its obligations to arrest Netanyahu and hand him over to face trial.
Netanyahu and a former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, face the prospect of arrest in 124 countries — including all of the EU, the UK and much of Asia and Africa — for “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.
Both deny the allegations, describing them as antisemitic.
But while other European nations, including France and Poland, have signalled some ambivalence about arresting the Israeli leader, a formal invitation from Merz would place Germany alongside Viktor Orbán’s Hungary in clearly stating that they would set aside their obligations under both their national and international laws by hosting Netanyahu.
Netanyahu’s office said an invitation would represent “overt defiance of the scandalous International Criminal Court decision to label the Prime Minister a war criminal”.
Merz’s invitation is not a departure from existing policy in Germany, where leaders across the political spectrum argue they have a responsibility to support Israel as part of the country’s atonement for the Holocaust.
The CDU leader, who last year accused chancellor Olaf Scholz of holding up weapons deliveries to Israel, has previously described his country’s relationship to the Jewish state as “unique — without ifs or buts”.
A spokesperson for Scholz had said last year that it was unlikely that Germany would consider arresting Netanyahu, given the nation’s “great responsibility towards Israel”.
But a successful state visit by Netanyahu to a major European nation like Germany would represent an unprecedented threat to the authority of the court, which does not allow member states to decide unilaterally whether or not to enforce warrants.
Italy recently allowed a notorious Libyan warlord to go free after an initial arrest in Turin, but cited a procedural technicality in doing so.
Netanyahu has travelled overseas only once, to the US, since the arrest warrants were issued in November 2024, where he was welcomed by President Donald Trump, who has put sanctions on the ICC for issuing the warrants. The US is not a signatory to the Rome Statue.
But Israel’s public broadcaster KAN reported at the time that Netanyahu’s official plane deliberately avoided Canadian airspace to pre-empt the possibility of arrest if the plane were forced to land because of a technical malfunction.
The ICC prosecutor had also initially requested warrants for three Hamas leaders for war crimes over their role in the October 7 2023 assault on Israel, in which local officials say 1,200 people were killed and some 250 taken hostage. All three are now believed to be dead.
Israel’s fierce military offensive in response to the October 7 attacks has killed nearly 50,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials — most of them women and children — destroyed most infrastructure in the besieged enclave and brought much of Gaza’s 2.3mn population to the brink of famine.
Israel is also not a signatory to the Rome Statute, and denies that the court has any jurisdiction over it. But the ICC has ruled that it has jurisdiction over the so-called “situation in Palestine” because the State of Palestine is a signatory to the Rome Statute.
Netanyahu is not the only world leader seeking to curb the ICC’s authority. Russian President Vladimir Putin has already tested ICC states’ commitment to their treaty obligations with a successful state visit to Mongolia in September last year.
Putin had skipped a planned visit to South Africa in 2023 after being indicted for war crimes involving Ukraine, after South African authorities declined to waive their legal obligations.
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