Credit: Greger Ravik (CC BY 2.0)

The Hungarian government had already come under sustained criticism from human rights groups for saying it would not enforce an ICC arrest warrant issued against Mr Netanyahu in November 2024.

In a Facebook post, Mr Orbán’s chief of staff Gulyás Gergely said the government would today “initiate the withdrawal procedure… in accordance with the constitutional and international legal frameworks”.

Hungary, which has been part of the ICC since it was formally established in 2002, will become the third state party to have withdrawn from the Rome Statute following Burundi in 2017 and the Philippines in 2019.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders in November 2024.

In issuing the warrants, the court said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant bear criminal responsibility as co-perpetrators for committing, jointly with others, the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.

They also said there are reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant each bear criminal responsibility as civilian superiors for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population.