Polish President Andrzej Duda is urging his nation’s government to guarantee that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will not be arrested if he attends a ceremony at Auschwitz.

The Israeli prime minister is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Gaza — a warrant that member nations, including Poland, are ostensibly required to act upon if presented with the opportunity.

Arrest would likely keep Netanyahu from attending an event commemorating 80 years since the liberation of Nazi Germany’s death camp in Auschwitz, one of the bloodiest sites of the Holocaust.

Presidential aide Malgorzata Paprocka said Thursday that Duda instructed Prime Minister Donald Tusk “to ensure that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is able to participate in the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, should he express such a wish,” according to the Times of Israel.

“In the opinion of the president, there is one issue — precisely because it is the Auschwitz camp, every person from Israel, every representative of the authorities of this country should have the opportunity to take part in this exceptional event,” Paprocka said of the president’s letter to Tusk.

The ceremony, dedicated to the memory of victims of the international genocide, is expecting attendance from both world leaders and some of the last living prisoners who survived the Nazi death camps.

It is not yet clear whether Netanyahu would be willing to take the risk of attending the event, and Polish lawmakers say that the issue has not yet been brought up in the legislature.

Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski said Thursday in Parliament that “there is no topic today about Netanyahu coming to Poland,” according to the Financial Times.

The warrant for Netanyahu’s arrest is becoming a make-or-break moment for the International Criminal Court’s claim of legitimacy and authority over member states.

Josep Borrell, the high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, said immediately following the warrant’s issue last year that there was no room for debate on enforcing ICC warrants.

“The states that signed the Rome convention are obliged to implement the decision of the court,” Borrell said. “It’s not optional.”

But various member nations have implicitly or explicitly signaled that they would not be comfortable detaining Netanyahu, whether due to political solidarity with Israel or concern about the optics of arresting the democratically elected leader of the Jewish state.

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“I find it hard to imagine that we would make arrests on this basis,” German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in November 2024, explaining that “it is a consequence of German history that we share unique relations and a great responsibility with Israel.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban openly protested the decision and encouraged Netanyahu to visit the country in protest, where the warrant would be disregarded.