By Michele Kambas

NICOSIA (Reuters) – European Union governments cannot choose whether to execute arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court against two Israeli leaders and a Hamas commander, the policy chief said on Saturday foreign to the EU.

The ICC on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri for alleged crimes against humanity.

All EU member states are signatories to the founding treaty of the ICC, called the Rome Statute.

Several EU states have said they will honor their commitments under the statute if necessary, but Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban invited Netanyahu to visit his country, assuring him that he would not be at risk if he did it.

“States which have signed the Rome Convention are obliged to implement the Court’s decision. It is not optional,” said Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, during a visit to Cyprus for a workshop bringing together Israeli and Palestinian peace activists.

These same obligations are also binding on countries aspiring to join the EU, he said.

“It would be very funny if the new arrivals had an obligation that the current members do not fulfill,” he told Reuters.

The United States rejected the ICC decision, and Israel said the ICC decision was anti-Semitic.

“Every time someone disagrees with the policies of an Israeli government, (they are) accused of anti-Semitism,” said Borrell, whose tenure as EU foreign policy chief ends this month.

“I have the right to criticize the decisions of the Israeli government, whether Mr Netanyahu or anyone else, without being accused of anti-Semitism. This is not acceptable. Enough is enough. “

Israel’s 13-month campaign in Gaza has killed around 44,000 Palestinians and displaced almost the entire population of the enclave while creating a humanitarian crisis, Gaza officials say.

Israel began its offensive after the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, and more than 250 others were taken hostage, Israel said.

In their ruling, the ICC judges said there were reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution and starvation as a weapon of war as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza”.

The arrest warrant for Masri lists accusations of massacres during the attacks of October 7, 2023. Israel says it killed Masri.

(Reporting by Michele Kambas, editing by Timothy Heritage)