Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Tuesday that the International Criminal Court's prosecutor has requested an arrest warrant against him, calling the reported move a "declaration of war" and threatening immediate retaliation against a Palestinian Bedouin community in the occupied West Bank. Smotrich, a far-right settler advocate who lives in a West Bank settlement himself, said he had been informed of the sealed warrant request the previous night, though he did not disclose the charges or identify his source. The ICC prosecutor's office declined to comment, citing confidentiality rules that keep warrant applications — and the judges' deliberations on them — under seal unless a court order directs otherwise.
In direct response, Smotrich announced he would sign an order to evacuate Khan al-Ahmar, a community of more than 750 Palestinian Bedouins located around 10 kilometres east of Jerusalem's Old City in the central West Bank. The settlement sits in the strategically sensitive E1 corridor — a strip of land that divides the northern and southern West Bank and where Israel has long-planned a major development project that critics say would sever territorial continuity for a future Palestinian state. International pressure and petitions before Israeli courts had repeatedly blocked previous evacuation attempts. Smotrich framed the move explicitly as punishment: "The Palestinian Authority has started a war, and it will get a war," accusing the authority, which administers parts of the West Bank, of lobbying behind the scenes for ICC action against Israeli officials.
The Palestinian Authority's Settlement and Wall Resistance Commission condemned the threatened evacuation, describing it as part of a broader strategy to consolidate Israeli settlement blocs and cut off the northern West Bank from the south. Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now was equally critical, accusing Smotrich — whom it called "the Minister of Expulsion and Annexation" — of taking revenge on the international community at the expense of one of its most vulnerable civilian populations. The group's executive director noted that under the current government, the sensitive E1 development plan had for the first time received formal approval, and that displacing communities like Khan al-Ahmar was a prerequisite for any annexation of the wider region.
The reported warrant application deepens an already fraught relationship between Israel and the Hague-based court. In November 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defence minister Yoav Gallant on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to Israel's military campaign in Gaza. Israel does not recognise the court's jurisdiction over its territory, and the United States — which is not an ICC member state — responded to those warrants by imposing sanctions on several ICC judges. Smotrich and fellow far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have already faced sanctions from the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand over allegations of inciting violence against Palestinians.
Under ICC procedure, warrant applications remain confidential to prevent suspects from being forewarned; a warrant only becomes public if a judge orders its disclosure, typically when a suspect travels to a member state obliged to carry out an arrest. Whether judges will approve any warrant against Smotrich remains unknown. What is already clear is that the mere prospect has accelerated one of the most contentious land disputes in the West Bank, with Palestinian leaders and Israeli civil society groups racing to prevent the evacuation of Khan al-Ahmar before any order is signed and enforced.