The German government has warned the Israeli government against evicting the residents of the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, located in a strategically important part of the occupied West Bank.
The announcement of such plans by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had been “noted with the utmost concern and we firmly reject these statements,” a spokesman for the Foreign Office in Berlin said.
There must be no evictions, the spokesman added. Berlin is calling on the Israeli government to abandon those plans.
Unilateral measures as part of a comprehensive intensification of settlement policy in the West Bank “violate international law,” the spokesman criticized. He added: “They also carry the risk of causing even greater instability in the region, in the West Bank itself, and stand in the way of a two-state solution.”
The two-state solution refers to an independent Palestinian state existing peacefully side by side with Israel. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejects such a solution, as does the Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas.
Smotrich had said he was responding to reports that the prosecution at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had requested an arrest warrant against him.
There has been no confirmation of this from the court so far. Media outlets such as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz had reported on the matter in recent days.
The Bedouin settlement is located east of Jerusalem in the strategic E1 area, which divides the West Bank into northern and southern halves. It forms part of the 60% of the West Bank that is under full Israeli control.
The spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry stated that there was no information regarding arrest warrants or requests for the issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli nationals by the ICC.
Nor was there any knowledge of any investigations by the ICC concerning Israel and Palestine.
In many cases, the ICC keeps the existence of arrest warrants under wraps and only discloses them in the event of a specific request for mutual legal assistance, in order to facilitate the arrest of wanted persons.
Since 2025, following a decision by the court, the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor has been prohibited from disclosing the existence of mere requests for arrest warrants.
