Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he considers a war crimes investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) a “strategic threat” to Israel if it goes ahead, and one of the new government’s primary objectives would be to prevent such a probe.
Announcing it at the government’s first cabinet meeting, Netanyahu claimed that prosecuting Israel for alleged crimes committed against the Palestinian Authority (PA) is a “rare strategic threat to Israel.”
“This is a worrying development,” said Netanyahu. “There is a word that I almost never use. Right, I don’t use the word ‘strategic.’ But here I will use this word, strategic. This is a strategic threat to the State of Israel – to IDF soldiers, to the commanders, to the ministers, to the governments, to everything,” he added. “We will discuss this in a separate forum.”
We, who advocate #Justice4Palestine, urge you commence @IntlCrimCourt investigation of #Israel's #WarCrimes at once, @FATOU_BENSOUDA. We request your mandate be inclusive of Israel's #CrimesAgainstHumanity, #Genocide & #CrimesOfAggression in #Palestine.@UNhttps://t.co/TjPrIrVlEV
— WarCrimesIntl (@WarCrimesIntl) May 11, 2020
According to the Times of Israel, Likud Minister Ze’ev Elkin was appointed to coordinate the government’s response to the challenges posed by The Hague.
It comes after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday, criticized the ICC, and threatened that the US would “exact consequences” against it if it continued its war crimes probe into Israel. For his part, Netanyahu accused the ICC of “persecuting Israel”.
Pompeo stressed that even though the PA has purported to join the Rome Statute that created the court, “we do not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state, and they, therefore, are not qualified to obtain full membership, or participate as a state in international organizations, entities, or conferences, including the ICC.”
Intel: Pompeo warns off ICC, welcomes Netanyahu’s new government https://t.co/5sL4RFMkAw pic.twitter.com/frhJlMeWGo
— Al-Monitor (@AlMonitor) May 18, 2020
On April 30, Bensouda released a 60-page document concluding that “the Prosecution has carefully considered the observations of the participants, and remains of the view that the Court has jurisdiction over the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
“Time will tell how far the ICC is willing to go with its unprecedented and historic attempt aimed at, finally, investigating the numerous crimes that have been committed in Palestine unhindered, with no recourse and no accountability,” wrote Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo in a recent article.
“For the Palestinian people, the long-denied justice cannot arrive soon enough,” Baroud and Rubeo added.
(Palestine Chronicle, MEMO, Social Media)
