Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces legal perils at home and abroad that point to a turbulent future for the Israeli leader and could influence the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, analysts and officials say.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) stunned Israel on Thursday by issuing arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 13-month-old conflict against the Hamas terror group in Gaza.

The ICC accuses Netanyahu and Gallant — whom the prime minister fired earlier this month — of targeting civilians and using starvation as a weapon of war. The court on Thursday also issued a warrant for Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, who Israel says was killed by an IDF strike in Gaza in July.

The bombshell came less than two weeks before Netanyahu is due to testify in a corruption trial that has dogged him for years and could end his political career if he is found guilty. He has denied any wrongdoing.

While the domestic bribery trial has polarized public opinion, the prime minister has received widespread support from across the political spectrum following the ICC move, giving him a boost in troubled times.

The warrants effectively bar Netanyahu and Gallant from entering the ICC’s 124 member states. Israel and the US, neither of which are members of the court, have slammed the motion to arrest the pair.

Netanyahu has denounced the court’s decision as antisemitic, and pledged that it would not deter Israel from protecting its citizens.

“Israelis get really annoyed if they think the world is against them and rally around their leader, even if he has faced a lot of criticism,” said Yonatan Freeman, an international relations expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

“So anyone expecting that the ICC ruling will end this government, and what they see as a flawed (war) policy, is going to get the opposite,” he added.

A senior diplomat said one initial consequence was that Israel might be less likely to reach a rapid ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon or secure a deal to bring back the hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza.

“This terrible decision has… badly harmed the chances of a deal in Lebanon and future negotiations on the issue of the hostages,” said Ofir Akunis, Israel’s consul general in New York.

“Terrible damage has been done because these organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas… have received backing from the ICC and thus they are likely to make the price higher because they have the support of the ICC,” he told Reuters.

While Hamas welcomed the ICC decision, there has been no indication that either it or Hezbollah see this as a chance to put pressure on Israel, which has inflicted huge losses on both terror groups over the past year, as well as on the civilian populations in which both groups are embedded.

The ICC warrants highlight the disconnect between the way the war is viewed in Israel and how it is seen by many abroad.

Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said the ICC move would likely harden resolve and give the war cabinet license to hit Gaza and Lebanon harder still.

“There’s a strong strand of Israeli feeling that runs deep, which says ‘if we’re being condemned for what we are doing, we might just as well go full gas,'” he told Reuters.

While Netanyahu has received wide support at home over the ICC action, the same is not true of the domestic graft case, where he is accused of bribery, breach of trust and fraud.

The trial opened in 2020 and Netanyahu is finally scheduled to take the stand next month after the court rejected his latest request to delay testimony, which he made on the grounds that he had been too busy overseeing the war to prepare his defense.

He was due to give evidence last year but the date was put back because of the war. His critics have accused him of prolonging the Gaza conflict to delay judgment day and remain in power, which he denies.

Last week, Netanyahu reportedly requested that the Shin Bet security service issue a recommendation to the court that it would be unsafe for the prime minister to testify, especially in the wake of a Hezbollah drone strike on his private home. The Shin Bet refused the request.

Long a divisive figure in Israel, Netanyahu’s trust among the public fell sharply in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on southern Israel that caught his government off guard, which killed over 1200 people and saw 251 hostages kidnapped into Gaza.

Israel’s subsequent campaign has killed more than 44,000 people, according to the Hamas health ministry, whose toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

The prime minister has refused advice from the state attorney general to set up an independent state commission of inquiry into what went wrong and Israel’s subsequent conduct of the war.

He is instead looking to establish an inquiry made up only of politicians, which critics say would not provide the sort of accountability demanded by the ICC.

The daily Yedioth Ahronoth said the failure to order an independent investigation had prodded the ICC into action. “Netanyahu preferred to take the risk of arrest warrants, just as long as he did not have to form such a commission,” it wrote on Friday.

The prime minister faces a difficult future living under the shadow of an ICC warrant, joining the ranks of only a few leaders to have suffered similar humiliation, including Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic.

It also means he risks arrest if he travels to any of the court’s 124 signatory states, including most of Europe.

One place he can safely visit is the United States, which is not a member of the ICC, and Israeli leaders hope US President-elect Donald Trump will bring pressure to bear by imposing sanctions on ICC officials.

The White House said Thursday that it “fundamentally rejects” the ICC’s decision.

“Let me be clear once again: whatever the ICC might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” US President Joe Biden said, denouncing the warrants as “outrageous.”

On Thursday, a White House National Security Council spokesperson told The Times of Israel that Washington was “deeply concerned by the prosecutor’s rush to seek arrest warrants and the troubling process errors that led to this decision.”

“The United States has been clear that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over this matter,” the spokesperson added. “In coordination with partners, including Israel, we are discussing next steps.”

Hinting at the direction of the next White House, Trump’s slated national security adviser, the hawkish Republican Representative Mike Waltz of Florida, wrote on X that “You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC and UN come January,” when Trump takes office.

“The ICC has no credibility and these allegations have been refuted by the US government,” wrote Waltz, adding that “Israel has lawfully defended its people [and] borders from genocidal terrorists.”

In the meantime, Israeli officials are talking to their counterparts in Western capitals, urging them to ignore the arrest warrants, as Hungary has already promised to do.

However, the charges are not going to disappear soon, if at all, meaning fellow leaders will be increasingly reluctant to have relations with Netanyahu, said Yuval Shany, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute.

“In a very direct sense, there is going to be more isolation for the Israeli state going forward,” he told Reuters.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.