Israel's far-right finance minister did not wait a single hour after learning of a secret ICC arrest warrant request before signing an order to bulldoze a Palestinian Bedouin village that the court itself had previously warned Israel not to touch.
Bezalel Smotrich held a press conference in Jerusalem on 19 May 2026, confirming he had been informed the night before that the International Criminal Court's prosecutor had secretly submitted an arrest warrant application against him, reportedly targeting his aggressive expansion of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
He did not stop at defiance. Smotrich declared the move 'a declaration of war,' vowed that Israel 'will respond with war,' then walked directly into signing an official evacuation order for Khan al-Ahmar, a Palestinian Bedouin community east of Jerusalem that international bodies have long called a flashpoint for war crimes.
Smotrich's Press Conference: The Warrant, the Threats, and the Settlement Boast
Standing at the Finance Ministry podium, Smotrich said he had been told on Monday evening that 'the chief prosecutor of the so-called antisemitic court in The Hague' had submitted a secret warrant request against him. He did not specify what charges the prosecutor sought, but he made the context plain himself.
According to the Times of Israel, Smotrich boasted at the same podium of approving 103 new settlements in the occupied West Bank since the current government took office in 2022, alongside 160 farming outposts that he said now give Israel effective control over 247,000 acres of Palestinian territory.
His language throughout was unambiguous. 'The Palestinian Authority started a war, and it will receive war,' he said. Then came the direct threat: 'From today, every economic or other target within my authority to strike, as Finance Minister or as a minister in the Defence Ministry, will be attacked.' He holds both portfolios simultaneously, giving him sweeping authority over fiscal policy and over civilian administration in the West Bank.
On the settlement record, Smotrich called the expansion a 'revolution' and confirmed to CNN that the government had authorised 51,370 housing units for deposit and final approval in the West Bank since 2022. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that the ICC prosecutor had been specifically considering whether that settlement drive constituted war crimes under the Rome Statute, given a July 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion ruling Israeli settlements a violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Khan al-Ahmar: Eight Years of International Warnings, Now Signed Away in Minutes
Khan al-Ahmar is a Bedouin community of approximately 200 residents, situated on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem. It sits squarely within Israel's E1 settlement corridor, a strip of land that, if fully settled, would permanently sever the northern and southern sections of the Palestinian West Bank and eliminate any geographic basis for a contiguous Palestinian state. That strategic position is precisely why the community has been a target for years.
In 2018, Israel's Supreme Court ruled twice in favour of demolishing the village, but execution was repeatedly delayed. That same year, then-ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda issued a formal public statement warning Israel that 'extensive destruction of property without military necessity and population transfers in an occupied territory constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute.' Bensouda wrote directly that she would 'not hesitate to take any appropriate action' if the demolition proceeded.
Amnesty International called the planned demolition a war crime and noted that the school in Khan al-Ahmar, built from rubber tyres and serving 170 children from five Bedouin communities, was included in the demolition order. The residents were offered relocation to a site near a former Jerusalem garbage dump, or a plot adjacent to a sewage plant near Jericho.
Smotrich signed the new evacuation order within minutes of his press conference. He told reporters the order would be 'only the beginning.' According to the Jerusalem Post, he later published the signed document publicly. Clearing Khan al-Ahmar is critical to advancing the E1 project, which Smotrich said last year 'buries the idea of a Palestinian state because there is nothing to recognise and no one to recognise.'
ICC Warrants and Israel's Expanding Legal Exposure at The Hague
Smotrich's case does not stand alone. In November 2024, the ICC formally issued arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from Israel's military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023. Those warrants are still active. Any signatory state to the Rome Statute is legally obligated to arrest Netanyahu or Gallant should either travel within its borders.
Reports indicate the ICC prosecutor may also be seeking a warrant against National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, although no official filing has been confirmed. The possibility of multiple simultaneous warrants against sitting Israeli cabinet ministers would represent an extraordinary escalation of international legal pressure on the Netanyahu government.
Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute and rejects the court's jurisdiction entirely. Smotrich reinforced that position on Tuesday. 'As a sovereign and independent state, we will not accept hypocritical dictates from biased bodies,' he said, adding that the warrant request 'does not move me' on a personal level. The United States has not ratified the Rome Statute either, and previously imposed sanctions on ICC officials during the first Trump term. The ICC has not responded publicly to Smotrich's statements, consistent with its policy on sealed proceedings.
In announcing that an international arrest warrant request would be met with the demolition of a village the court had already flagged as a potential war crime, Smotrich handed the ICC the clearest possible argument for why the warrant was necessary in the first place.
