Palestinian Affairs

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Abbas Mulls Bid for International Criminal Court

Reports surfaced on Wednesday that pressure was building on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to apply for membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC), a move that would further jeopardize relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) amid an ongoing Israeli campaign to halt rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip into the Jewish state.

Abbas reportedly convened a meeting of Palestinian leadership on Wednesday afternoon to sign paperwork to join among other institutions the ICC, which would allow the PA to take legal action against Jerusalem for alleged war crimes:

PA President Mahmoud Abbas called a crisis meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the afternoon with the intention of signing paperwork to apply to join the ICC in The Hague and other international organizations.

Abbas charged Israel with committing “genocide” in Gaza during its Operation Protective Edge — launched to stem Hamas rocket fire on civilians across Israel — which has so far killed 43 Palestinians.

The Palestinian push to join international institutions – which reemerged in earnest at the beginning of April, though Abbas at the time had not attempted to join the ICC – had at the time been quickly criticized for violating core commitments to avoid unilateralism stretching back to the Oslo Accords.

An ICC bid would constitute a kind of “scorched earth” campaign by the Palestinians, what observers increasingly worry is a diplomatic attempt to ascend to and then politicize international institutions. Speaking on a conference call with The Israel Project Wednesday, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren called an attempt by the PA to seek ICC membership a “strategic threat” to be taken “very, very seriously”:

To the best of my knowledge, Mahmoud Abbas is not going, is not trying to sanction Israel in order to get a better two-state solution. That’s why I talk about a strategic threat. He has not indicated in any way that that is his goal, and I think that it will pose a great challenge to the state of Israel if he does this. I don’t know of many downsides. There are people in Israel who talk about that Israel can make counter-charges in the ICC and the ICJ, saying that if Mahmoud Abbas indeed arrogates his position as the de facto sovereign over all the territory and all the population of both the West Bank and Gaza, than he is responsible for the firing of hundreds of rockets at Israeli civilians, he is responsible for what is clearly a war crime, and Israel can sue him in return. I think that in the best of all possible worlds that might be the case, but in many international forums, certainly in the UN Commission on Human Rights, Israel doesn’t get a fair shake and there is no best of all possible worlds, and I think that, again, the danger of sanctions and embargoes is a very real one.

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