The Foreign Ministry did not say outright that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel would be free to travel to France, but it argued that an I.C.C. rule on immunity may apply to him.

The French foreign ministry suggested that Netanyahu may have immunity from arrest because Israel isn’t a signatory to the court’s founding treaty.

Lawyers, rights groups and politicians accuse Paris of misrepresenting the Rome Statute after its volte-face on obligation to arrest and surrender Israel's PM to the ICC