Palestinian Statehood
The United Nations voted yesterday to recognize Palestine as a “non-member state.” The U.N. vote was overwhelmingly in favor of Palestinian statehood, with the U.S. and Israel being practically the only countries frantically clinging to the 1900s by voting No.
The biggest political advantage of being recognized as a state is that Palestine might be able to become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Membership in the ICC would enable Palestine to charge Israeli leaders with war crimes or crimes against humanity.
“Lawfare” is the term used by Western leaders who don’t like this idea. After all, who needs some sort of newfangled international court when it’s so much easier to just assemble a Coalition Of The Willing and stomp the shit out of any country you don’t like.
According to a director of the International Crisis Group, prominent Israelis are afraid to leave the country for fear they’ll be hauled to The Hague and arrested as war criminals.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government — in a perfect demonstration of exactly WHY the U.N. voted the way it did — has just authorized 3,000 more Israeli settler homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And thousands more settler homes in that region, already in the planning stage, will be expedited.
Gee, why has the rest of the world turned against Israel? It’s just mind-boggling.
Labels: ICC, International Criminal Court, International Crisis Group, lawfare, Palestine non-member state, United Nations Palestinian statehood
posted by Tom Harper @ 1:25 PM
3 Comments:
Israel is making a mistake adding more of those new-settlement homes. But then, Israel has made that mistake repeatedly over many years.
But what's one big, repetitive mistake without another? The Palestinians just got through carrying out a big but apparently not very effective rocket offensive against random Israeli civilian areas. Great way to strengthen the Likud Party's hand ahead of an election — and weaken the hand of less hawkish parties and pols the Palestinians might find more willing to negotiate reasonably with them.
And so it goes.
THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO PROTECT THEMSELVES. RIBBED, FOR HER PLEASURE.
SW: I'm hoping that if Palestinians have access to international courts, they'll have more incentive to work within the system via legal action, and less incentive to keep staging terrorist attacks against Israel. It's a nice theory anyway; we'll see if it pans out.
Randal: Well, when you put it in those terms...
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