Is Palestine's Membership to ICC a Threat for Israel?

20:55     31 March, 2015

Tomorrow, on April 1 Palestine will officially become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). This means that Palestine will become full voting member of the Assembly of State Parties, with the help of which many aspects of the Court are being decided. How will this influence on the Israeli-Palestinian relations? And why is this membership so important for Palestine?

To answer these questions first of all, we should understand, what ICC is and what functions it has. As it is written on the official website of ICC, the International Criminal Court, governed by the Rome Statute, is the first permanent, treaty based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community. As Lenta.ru reports, in 2009, the Palestinian Authority appealed to the International Criminal Court to investigate the actions of Israel during operation "Cast Lead", but the request was denied because Palestine at that time did not have the appropriate status in the UN. It was only in 2012 that Palestine was granted non-member Observer State status, which gave Palestine an opportunity to directly appeal to international organizations under the auspices of the UN.

Thus, from tomorrow on Palestine will become an official member of International Criminal Court, which, of course, will further on bring escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will put under a big question the success of the negotiations, if there is any. The main objective of Palestine in becoming a member of ICC is to identify, prosecute and judge the perpetrators of war crimes committed on the territory of occupied Palestine, the Israeli Times reports.

For imagining, what consequences Palestine’s accession to the ICC can bring, one should remember what happened when Palestine for the first time declared about its intention. Israel condemned the actions of Abbas, viewing them as a unilateral step that undermines the prospects for peace talks between Palestine and Israel and decided to freeze Palestine tax revenues. It was only three months later after the elections, when the international community started criticizing Netanyahu for his pre-election stance about the impossibility of establishing a Palestinian state, that Netanyahu decided to unfreeze the revenues.

It is difficult to say, what will happen if Palestine appeals to ICC against Israel, but we can assume that it can lead to corresponding actions – up to new clashes.