Orban Invites Netanyahu to Hungary, Flouting I.C.C. Arrest Warrant

Hungary, unlike the United States, is a signatory to the court, which accused the Israeli leader of war crimes in Gaza. Responses to the warrant from other European countries were varied.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Europe’s perennial rule-breaker and a champion of national sovereignty, said on Friday that he had invited Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, to visit his country and would ignore an International Criminal Court arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister.

Hungary, unlike the United States, is a signatory to the court and thus formally obliged to act on its warrants. But Mr. Orban, in a letter to Mr. Netanyahu, a copy of which was released by the Israeli prime minister’s office, said he was “shocked” by the international court’s “shameful decision” and promised that the ruling would have “no impact whatsoever on the Hungarian-Israeli alliance and friendship.”

Inviting Mr. Netanyahu to visit, he said that Hungary “will ensure your safety and freedom.”

Mr. Orban’s vow to protect Mr. Netanyahu from arrest made Hungary the first European Union country to openly flout the I.C.C. ruling.

The arrest warrants issued Thursday against Mr. Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip have put many countries in an uncomfortable position. Many are supporters of the court in general, but also allies of Israel.

This is particularly true for Germany, where a desire to separate itself from the horrors of the Holocaust during Nazi rule has made it wary of criticizing Israel and its leaders.

Steffen Hebestreit, the German government’s main spokesman, said in a statement Friday that the country was “one of the biggest” supporters of the international court, noting that Germany had helped create the I.C.C. statutes under which the arrest warrants were issued. But as “a consequence of German history” it has “a unique relationship with and a great responsibility for Israel,” he said.

Asked to clarify his written statement, Mr. Hebestreit said at a news conference in Berlin on Friday that given Germany’s past, he would not expect the country’s police to carry out the arrests if it ever came to it. “It is difficult for me to imagine that we carry out arrests in Germany on this basis,” he said.

Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister, had earlier said that Germany abides “by the law at national, European, and international level” but added that the question of whether the Israelis would be arrested was “theoretical” as they were not in the country.

Britain and France both reaffirmed the court’s standing but stopped short of saying whether they would arrest Mr. Netanyahu if he crossed their borders. One of the countries clearly promising to enforce the arrest warrant should Mr. Netanyahu visit was Slovenia, which in June officially recognized a Palestinian state.

Ireland and Spain, both of which also recognized a Palestinian state this year, took the same firm line.

Mr. Orban appeared to stand alone in his unequivocal response from the other side, and Mr. Netanyahu, in a statement, thanked him for his “moral clarity” and for “standing on the side of justice and truth.”

Mr. Orban has often been accused by critics of stoking antisemitism by casting the Hungarian-born Jewish financier George Soros as the global puppet master behind liberal causes. But the Hungarian leader has been one of Israel’s most stalwart allies in Europe, embracing Mr. Netanyahu as a kindred spirit in step with his own view that countries should not bow to outside pressure.

The arrest warrant against the Israeli leader, Mr. Orban told Kossuth Radio, was “fundamentally wrong” and an “outrageously brazen” political decision that would only lead to “the discrediting of international law” and “add fuel to the flames” of conflict in the Middle East.

“I will guarantee him that if he comes the International Criminal Court ruling will have no effect in Hungary,” Mr. Orban told the state radio station.

The arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant amount to the first time that leaders of a modern Western-style democracy stand accused of war crimes by the global tribunal.

The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas’s military chief, Muhammad Deif, accusing him, too, of crimes against humanity, though he may be dead.

Mr. Orban, who presents himself as a maverick in the mold of the United States President-elect Donald J. Trump, has a long record of breaking ranks with his European allies and defying what he views as anti-democratic judicial overreach by domestic and international tribunals. Just days after Hungary in July assumed the European Union’s rotating six-month presidency and adopted the slogan “Make Europe Great Again,” Mr. Orban dismayed fellow leaders by flying to Moscow to meet President Vladimir V. Putin upending Europe’s policy of trying to isolate the Russian leader.

Peter Kreko, the director of Political Capital Institute, a research group in Budapest, described Mr. Orban’s defiance of the I.C.C. as a “continuation and expansion of his anti-establishment logic” and a gesture to not only Mr. Netanyahu but also to Mr. Trump, who shares his anti-establishment views and strong support for Israel.

Mr. Orban, he said, sees rocking the boat as “his trump card” and “he uses it as much as he can,” no matter what the risks are “for a small country that could benefit from the protection of international law in certain aspects.”

Europe’s top court this week began hearing a case against Hungary on child protection legislation that the European Union says equates pedophilia with homosexuality and constitutes a “massive and flagrant violation” of European laws.

Hungary sees the case before the European Court of Justice as another example of what Mr. Orban, speaking at meeting this month with European leaders, scorned as “judicial activism” that undermines the will of voters by allowing judges to override decisions taken by their elected representatives.

Some other European leaders have voiced reservations about the I.C.C. warrants against Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, including Prime Minister Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic, which, like Hungary, is a firm ally of Israel. Mr. Fiala said the court’s move undermined its authority because it “equates the elected representatives of a democratic state with the leaders of an Islamist terrorist organization.”

But Mr. Fiala and others said they would abide by their commitments as signatories of the international treaty that established the I.C.C.

Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting from Berlin and José Bautista from Madrid.

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