The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes in the Palestinian territories, including Gaza.

The ICC's Pre-Trial Chamber said the warrants cover "crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 to at least 20 May 2024".

In doing so, it also unanimously rejected Israel's challenges to jurisdiction under Articles 18 and 19 of the Rome Statute, the ICC's governing treaty.

The ICC's announcement has significant ramifications for Netanyahu and Gallant, as all 124 signatory countries to the court are now bound to arrest and hand them over for prosecution if they trespass on their territory.

These 124 countries include some of Israel's most staunch Western allies, such as the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway.

Other European countries that would be off-limits to Israeli leaders include Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Portugal and Poland.

More major ICC signatories include Greece, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico, Kenya, Colombia and Brazil.

A notable exception would be the US, which withdrew from the Rome Statute in 2002, meaning it would not be legally bound to take action against Netanyahu and Gallant.

However, according to the ICC, while non-state parties have no obligation, they are "encouraged" to take action to enforce orders, as the court itself has no enforcement mechanism.

An ICC manual says some non-signatories have played an active role in previous rendition operations.

"However, when the UNSC invokes the Court's jurisdiction over a particular situation, the duty to cooperate binds the relevant UN member states, whether or not they are States Parties to the Rome Statute," the document states.

Legal scholar Gerhard Kemp told Anadolu that the ICC's decision to issue the arrest warrants is "important for several reasons" and puts pressure on those nations that have supported Israel despite the international backlash over its genocide in Gaza.

"It reaffirms that the ICC has jurisdiction over the situation in Palestine, rejected Israel's jurisdictional challenges, made important observations about the nature of the conflict (international armed conflict and the applicability of international humanitarian law and so on), made observations important to the strength of the evidence,” he said.

"Perhaps most importantly, it confirms the ICC's principle that official capacity is no bar to the execution of arrest warrants and eventual trial at the ICC of senior government officials, in this case including the prime minister of Israel."

Like Sudan's Omar Al-Bashir and Russian President Vladimir Putin, this arrest warrant for Netanyahu "will pose significant diplomatic and political challenges to ICC members, especially party states in the West - such as Germany and the UK." , he continued.

"Of course, states parties to the Rome Statute have the legal obligation ... but as we've seen with Bashir (when South Africa and Jordan and other states failed to implement a cease-and-desist order) and more recently Mongolia (when it failed to arrest Putin ), member states often find it politically difficult to meet their obligations," said Kemp.

"I suspect that European countries and Israel's other traditional allies in the West will be pressured to quickly take a position on whether to execute arrest warrants if the case arises."