WASHINGTON

Colombian President Gustavo Petro described as "logical" the decision Thursday by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

"This is the logical thing to do. Netanyahu is genocidal. The world's court of justice says so and his ruling must be obeyed," Petro wrote X. "If Biden disregards this order, he simply leads the world into barbarism. Western Europe must regain its independence in international politics and act to comply with the court order.”

The Hague-based court announced the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant earlier in the day "for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed from at least 8 October 2023 until at least 20 May 2024," when ICC prosecutor Karim Khan sought the warrants.

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

The court said it “found reasonable grounds” to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant "bear criminal responsibility" for "the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts."

The warrants come as Israel’s genocidal offensive against the Gaza Strip recently entered its second year, having already killed some 44,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing and deliberate blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water and medicine, pushing the population to the brink of starvation.