Israeli officials are continuing to express their usual mix of bewilderment and outrage at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigating their assorted war crimes against the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority, however, seems to be in a bargaining mood.
Palestinian officials are now saying that the primary focus of the ICC complaint will be settlement expansion in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and that they are willing to withdraw the complaint if Israel agrees to free the settlements pending further peace talks.
The offer is unlikely to be accepted, as Israel’s outgoing far-right coalition has ruled out ever freezing settlement construction again. Israeli officials rather seem focused on trying to punish the Palestinians, by seizing tax money from them.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested Israel’s ire could quickly shift from the Palestinians to the ICC itself, saying they are already lobbying nations to defund the World Court to punish them for allowing Palestinian membership and even considering the complaint.
Will the yanks allow the Zionist to push them out of the middle East for good.
Israel is 51 state of America–never happen.
If Israel has the "most moral army in the world" why don't Israel's leaders welcome the chance to prove it before the Iternational Court? If they have done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about. Isn't that what we peasants are regularly told by our leaders?
"…lobbying nations to defund the World Court to punish them…"
Someone should remind Israel that very few countries even listen to what Israel says anymore…least of all when Israel attempts to tell other countries what to do. And pretty much everyone else is tired of Israel's blathering about anti-semitism when they don't do what Israel wants.
The upside of this is Israel will never stop the settlements and that fact will assist in the appeal to the ICC. And if Israel can't buy off the ICC then at least the matter will be brought more clearly to the eyes of the world to be condemned.
Maybe Israel should take the PA and Hamas to the ICC and press their charges of alleged war crimes- oh, wait, that would mean Israel would have to sign on to everything and that would make them….open to ICC jurisdiction. As it stands, Israel has not ratified the ICC protocols and submitted itself to that court's jurisdiction so in the end Israel has no credentials at all to speak on what the cases the ICC pursues or discards.
On the other hand, if Israel hasn't done anything wrong, why are they so afraid of an ICC investigation? Wouldn't that give them a world platform to demonstrate their innocence of all wrongdoing? Or… do they have something to hide? Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Not so much a lady as a dirty old moll !
War criminal Israel wants to defund the International Criminal Court, eh? Hell, I’ve got a better idea: The U.S.
Government ought to defund Israel!
So the QUISLING Abbas is protecting himself and the elite of the PA and screwing the Palestinian people. Nothing has changed because he is willing to give away the store in order to maintain the status quo: no state, no right of return, continued occupation, continued servitude, colonization, poverty and living as refugees in their own country, no dissolution of the PA with the expense and headache of policing and maintaining the occupation the problem of Israel, continued expectation that the expense of the occupation will be funded by any state but Israel, etc..