He has a terribly complex situation in the Middle East to deal with when he takes office in January. In this context, the ICC options are likely to be seen as important transaction cards.

And by instinct, Mr. Trump can be torn. At war with the judiciary at home, and a long-time critic of transnational institutions, it’s hard to imagine he has much love for the ICC.

In fact, his administration imposed sanctions on it during his last term.

Meanwhile, Mike Waltz, whom Trump has tapped to serve as national security adviser, said the court should expect “a strong response to the anti-Semitic bias of the ICC and the UN in January”.

On the other hand, the president-elect has called on Israel to end the war in Gaza and “stop killing people” several times over the past year to no avail. That positioning is credited with winning votes from Arab Americans in November.

“I think Israel made a very big mistake,” Trump told an Israeli newspaper in April, describing the bombing of civilian residential buildings in Gaza.

“I wanted to call and say don’t do it. These pictures and images. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, oh, that’s a terrible portrait. It is a very bad image for the world. The world is seeing this… every night I saw buildings falling down on people.”

Even in Europe, politicians proceeded cautiously. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said the ICC decision should be respected and implemented, while a spokesman for Sir Keir Starmer said: “We respect the independence of the International Criminal Court.”

Unfortunately for Netanyahu and Gallant, that kind of political ambivalence may be enough to keep them grounded, or at least on flight paths that avoid airspace and runways of all 124 ICC member states.

In most of Western Europe, the courts still operate independently of the state and they play a very long game – as Chile’s General Augusto Pinochet found out on a short trip to London back in 1998.