Palestinians to Make Case Against Israel in ICC

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright January 4, 2015
All Rights Reserved.
                                    

                Requesting redress in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, the Gaza-Ramallah-based PLO-Hamas entity seeks criminal charges against Israel for its 2014 six-week-long war in Gaza.  Seventy-nine-year-old PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas threw in the towel on peace talks with Israel April 29, giving the green light to Hamas’s militant wing al-Qassam Brigades to start firing rockets into Israel.  Forming a unity government April 23, the PLO-Hamas entity pivoted away from the peace table, pursuing war and now criminal charges against Israel.  U.S. officials warned PLO-Hamas that going to the ICC to resolve disputes with Israel might result in a cutoff of U.S. aid.  Going to the ICC, PLO-Hamas hopes to pressure Israel into concessions for a future Palestinian State.  Palestinian attempts in the U.N. Security Council to force an Israeli withdrawal failed Dec. 30, 2014.

             Working the political backrooms, Palestinians hoped to find enough anti-Israel sentiment in the ICC to get charges against Israel.  What Abbas and Gaza’s Hamas leader 54-year-old Ismail Haniyeh forget is that the ICC will ask Palestinians to show proof of sovereignty in what they refer to as “occupied territories.”  Palestinians want Israel out of the pre-1967 War borders, before Israel annexed Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights at the end of the Six-Day-War June 10, 1967.  Without Hamas officially ending its war with Israel, Abbas knew joining Hamas April 23, 2014 meant that the PLO-Hamas entity was now at war with Israel.  Abbas’s reluctance to stop Hamas rocket stemmed from political pressure to let the bankrupt Hamas fight it out with Israel until enough damage justified a new Arab donor’s conference.

             Before the July 8 War with Israel, Hamas ran out of cash, failing to pay civil servants for months.  Going to war with Israel was Hamas’s last-ditch way to force a donors conference to give the PLO-Hamas entity an immediate cash infusion.  When donors finished their work in Cairo Oct. 12, 2014, PLO-Hamas received $5.4 billion, plenty to keep them going for a while.  When Palestinians make their case to the ICC, they’ll have to explain the link between going bankrupt and shooting rockets into Israel.  It’s easy for the press to get caught up in the minutiae of who killed whom.  Canceling interest payments to the PLO-Hamas government, Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu retaliated withholding Palestinian tax transfers.  Netanyahu won’t sit idly by while the Israeli military is dragged into the ICC and accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

             Rolling the dice in the ICC, Abbas could turn up snake eyes, especially if they can’t prove sovereignty in the so-called “Palestinians territories.”  When five Arab countries, led by Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and backed by PLO’s Yasser Arafat, attacked Israel June 5, 1967 with the intent of annihilating the Jewish State, they lost Egypt’s Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, Jordan’s West Bank and East Jerusalem and Syria’s Golan Heights.  Unlike other countries that opt for war and lose territory, the U.N. has never accepted Israel’s legitimate spoils of the 1967 Six-Day-War.  Had Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq not gone to war against Israel, Palestinians would be arguing with Egypt, Jordan and Syria over “occupied” territories.  Before 1967, there’s no proof Palestinians has sovereign control of any territory they now claim as Israeli “occupied” territories. 

              If Hamas, and now the combined entity with the PLO, ended their war with Israel, like Egypt did in 1979 in former President Jimmy Carter’s Camp David Accords, they’d have an acceptable peace treaty to start an independent state.  No sovereign nation can expect to negotiate a peace treaty with parties currently at war, like the PLO-Hamas government.  When Hamas tries to make its case in the ICC, they’ll have to explain rocket fire that preceded Israeli Defense Forces entering Gaza.  With Hamas’s missiles, rocket lauchers and tunnels embedded in Gaza’s dense civilian population, the IDF has no choice but to go after Hamas militants in Gaza.  Hamas likes to blame the rocket war on a crackdown in the West Bank following the June12 abduction and muder of three Israeli teenagers.  What they won’t tell the ICC is that Hamas ran out of cash and needed a war to squeeze cash out of Arab donors.

             PLO-Hamas has found every way possible other than peace talks to get Israel out of the so-called Palestinian territories.  After winning the 1967 Six-Day-War, Israeli considers its spoils as Israeli territory, until a peace treaty specifies otherwise.  Staking claims of Israeli occupation, Palestinians must show proof to the ICC that they possessed sovereignty prior to the 1967 War.  Whatever the human and property losses during the 2014 Gaza War, the ICC can’t ignore relentless Hamas rocket attacks before Israel officially went to war July 8.  When considering Palestinian complaints about Israel’s blockade on Gaza, ICC officials will consider Egypt’s blockade on Gaza, concerned that Hamas militants aid-and-abet the banned Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.  Having destroyed more than 150 smuggling tunnels, Egypt has concerns about Hamas destabilizing the el-Sisi government. 

About the Author 

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.


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