The plane transporting Benjamin Netanyahu has avoided the airspace of several European countries en route to the United States due to concerns over international arrest warrants.

The Maariv Hebrew daily, citing its sources, reported on Monday that the plane took an exceptional route to reach Washington to avoid entering the airspace of countries that have declared they would enforce arrest warrants against him in case of entry.

Several media outlets also confirmed that Netanyahu was forced to take the detour.

Netanyahu arrived in Washington on Sunday afternoon for meetings with President Donald Trump and senior administration officials.

Several countries and human rights organizations have hit out at the US over the current visit by the “criminal” Israeli prime minister. The pair are due to meet on Tuesday, amid widespread uncertainty about the parameters of the encounter.

In November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former minister of military affairs Yoav Gallant over war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

The judges said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu and Gallant “intentionally and knowingly deprived the civilian population in Gaza of objects indispensable to their survival”.

The court also said the men bore “criminal responsibility” for war crimes and crimes against humanity during the campaign of genocide in Gaza.

It had been the first instance in the court’s 22-year history it issued arrest warrants for Western-allied senior officials.

The visit comes at a potentially pivotal moment amid talks on the second phase of the ceasefire in Gaza. An Israeli negotiator has already censured Netanyahu for “flagrantly violating” the terms of a fragile truce after the prime minister delayed critical talks set to begin on Monday.

According to CNN, the negotiator claimed Netanyahu’s refusal to send a delegation to Doha on the agreed date has thrown the Gaza ceasefire into jeopardy. 

Under the terms of the agreement, negotiations for the second phase of the deal were scheduled to start on the 16th day of the ceasefire – which fell on Monday.

However, Netanyahu reportedly postponed dispatching his team until after his return from Washington, sparking outrage among mediators and negotiators.

The anger is also boiling across the region after Trump stunned West Asia with an explicit call for transferring Gaza’s population out of the besieged Palestinian territory.

Trump has said he would like to see Jordan, Egypt and other Arab countries take in Palestinian refugees to “just clean out” the Palestinian region.