The plane carrying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Florida for talks with U.S. President Donald Trump passed through the airspace of three countries that are parties to the International Criminal Court, despite an active ICC arrest warrant against the Israeli leader.
Flight tracking data from FlightRadar24 showed Netanyahu’s aircraft, known as “Wings of Zion,” crossed the airspace of Greece, Italy and France before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.
All three countries are signatories to the Rome Statute, which obliges member states to cooperate with ICC arrest warrants.
Right, you don’t “just shoot down” planes. You order them to land, as they are in violation of your sovereign airspace, and in violation of international law.
Russian planes violating European airspace are not shot down, they are ordered to land and they comply. Planes violating “US airspace” in Iraq and Afghanistan were not shot down, because they complied when ordered to land.
And maybe I’m being pedantic, but a leader overseeing an ongoing genocide is an immediate threat of the highest order.
While I am also frustrated that many European states do not take their erga omnes obligations serious in regards to genocide, do I think shooting down a plane on the basis of a disputed warrant would not be a proportionate measure[1].
Generally planes can be ordered to land, but if they ignore that call and there is no further threat (like many Russian planes), they will generally escort these planes until they are out of the airspace. States do this based on the prohibition of the use of force as defined in article 2 of the UN Charter.
https://opil.ouplaw.com/display/10.1093/law:epil/9780199231690/law-9780199231690-e1138, ‘[T]here appears to be a measure of agreement at least insofar as a State can respond proportionally to the violation of its airspace by foreign aircraft (see Korean Air Lines Incident [1983]). However, there is an equal measure of disagreement as to the exact limits of this right. In any case, the principle of proportionality must be applied for every action taken. However, even in the light of these prerequisites, it is still highly disputed whether the downing of an aircraft constitutes a legitimate means in terms of ultima ratio’. ↩︎