Poland has signaled to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will not be arrested if he attends the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Any representative of the Israeli leadership who wishes to participate on January 27 can feel safe and will not be arrested, said Prime Minister Donald Tusk, after the Cabinet agreed on this decision.
The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant late last year, for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
However, Netanyahu said a few weeks ago that he did not plan to attend the memorial. Israel will be represented by its Minister of Education, according to Tusk.
The spokesperson of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said that there is no indication that Netanyahu wants to visit this memorial.
The reminder said delegates from 10 countries have confirmed they will attend.
The Nazis killed more than one million people in Auschwitz, a German death camp. They killed about 6 million Jews across Europe during the Shoah, or Holocaust.
The warrant has drawn widespread criticism from other countries as the first international arrest warrant against a Western head of state.
Canada, Italy, and the Netherlands – the country that hosts the court – said they would immediately fulfill their obligations, meaning they would arrest Netanyahu at any time during the visit.
Others were more reserved, such as France which said it would respect the law while asking if Netanyahu would be happy with immunity.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán did not hesitate and extended the invitation to Netanyahu, saying he would ignore the warrant.
Before the decision of the Polish cabinet, President Andrzej Duda wrote to the Tusk government to protect Netanyahu from arrest if possible.
Tusk expressed clear dismay at Duda’s move. Duda, from the main opposition PiS party, has often disrupted the government in the past.
Tusk said that Duda knows that the government is working on a decision to protect the representatives of Israel in this memorial. “There are issues that should be handled with tact, especially when they are so weighty and complicated,” said Tusk.
The Polish prime minister emphasized that his government generally recognizes the powers of the International Criminal Court.
“This decision affects the commemoration of the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. For us, it is very important that Poland does not become one of the countries that openly and openly shows that they want to defy the decision of the international courts,” he said.
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