“I think that everybody should rise up against this,” the Israeli prime minister said in an interview with Trinity Broadcasting Network, the world’s largest Christian television network.
It was not clear if Netanyahu intended to also block ICC officials from entering the country, which could hamper its work because Israel controls access to the West Bank and Jerusalem.
The case involving Israel follows years of preliminary investigations. Bensouda said in December that she would seek to open a formal inquiry into continuing war crimes in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
It would look at alleged crimes carried out by both Israelis and Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, which has been accused of “intentionally directing attacks against civilians”, according to Bensouda’s office.
She intends to investigate incidents during the 2014 Gaza war between Israel and Hamas. The case could also be expanded to include the killings by Israeli soldiers of more than 200 Palestinians, including more than 40 children, at demonstrations along the Gaza frontier during the past two years.
Separately, Bensouda argued there was a “reasonable basis” to believe that Israeli authorities had committed war crimes by moving Israeli civilians into the West Bank to live in settlements. Under the Geneva convention, signed after the second world war, the transfer of civilians into occupied land is prohibited.
In his interview, Netanyahu, who intends to declare large parts of the Palestinian territories as Israeli land, said the ICC was impinging on “Israel’s right, the Jewish people’s right, to live in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel”.