Reactions to the new membership of the Palestinian Authority in the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the The Hague have not been long in coming.
With the signature of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on the Rome Statute sealing the entity’s membership in the Court, Israeli leaders immediately issued their responses.
As Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted, the move may very well be a signature on a death warrant for the Palestinian entity.
“The one who should fear the International Criminal Court at The Hague is the Palestinian Authority, which is in a unity government with Hamas, a declared terrorist organization like ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) that commits war crimes,” Netanyahu warned.
“We will repel this latest effort to force diktats on us, just as we have repelled the Palestinian turn to the [United Nations] Security Council.”
Legally, the ICC’s Rome Statute forces the Palestinians to undergo the same scrutiny as any other member nation, and to abide by the same human rights standards as well. Thus the PA “unity government” — which includes Gaza’s Hamas terrorist organization — can now legitimately be held culpable at the ICC for its use of its citizens as human shields, among other war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by its terrorists during its war with Israel in summer 2014.
Abbas signed the Rome Statute and 21 other international treaties just a day after a draft resolution submitted by Jordan on behalf of the PA was voted down at the United Nations Security Council.
The resolution called for the withdrawal of all Israel Defense Forces from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria (all areas conquered in the 1967 Six Day War) by 2017. The move would have left more than half a million Jews living in those areas completely defenseless in the face of an already escalating deadly intifada.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman also had harsh words for Abbas, saying he “can sign whichever treaty he wants. [But] the only ones who have committed war crimes in the conflict here are the Palestinians.”
Citing countless lethal attacks and “indiscriminate murderous terrorism against babies, children, women and men over the past 100 years” by PA Arab terrorists, Liberman warned Abbas not to threaten Israel, “the nation with the most moral army in the world.”
Economics Minister Naftali Bennett also scored Abbas, saying that “he who has the evil of terrorism spread throughout his head should not venture out into the sunlight.”
Bennett labeled the PA leader as one of the “greatest inciters of terrorism,” noting that Abbas is a “veteran Holocaust denier who should approach the Court as a defendant only.”