If President Trump is backtracking on his promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, allegedly for the sake of a “peace process,” why is he simultaneously allowing the Palestinians to violate U.S. law and sink peace unilaterally?
American law requires that funding for Palestinians be drastically curtailed if they use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to turn Israelis into war criminals. Though Palestinians have given the ICC a veritable bear hug, hundreds of millions of American dollars are still flowing into Palestinian coffers.
Palestinians are actively using a crooked international legal system as a means to avoid a negotiated end to the Arab-Israeli conflict and an acceptance of a Jewish state. It’s called lawfare — the antithesis of a “peace process.”
Palestinian-led lawfare has two goals: to criminalize Israeli exercise of the right of self-defense, and to criminalize Israelis living on any territory that Palestinians and the UN have unilaterally appropriated.
Congress has understood lawfare to be exactly what it says — namely, war by another means. They have also understood that twisting self-defense against terrorism into a war crime will rebound on American and NATO soldiers. Feeding Israelis to the sharks will be just the first course.
The International Criminal Court Statute was a coup for anti-American and anti-Israeli globalists because it trashed the essence of the reach of international law – namely, the consent of states. For the first time, international law could be used directly against citizens of states that had refused to be bound. Neither Israel nor the United States have ratified the ICC Statute, but that cannot prevent the ICC prosecutor from going after either Americans or Israelis.
Moreover, the late stages of the drafting process of the ICC Statute – originally conceived as an instrument to target the most heinous acts perpetrated by humankind – were hijacked in 1998 by the Palestinians and their friends. The result is a statute that purports to turn Israeli settlements into war crimes.
Congress, therefore, ostensibly decided to protect Israelis from this international monstrosity by threatening serious financial repercussions to the Palestinian Authority (PA) should Palestinians start down the ICC path.
Each year beginning in 2014, and most recently in May 2017, the consolidated appropriations bills have included a commitment to deny the bulk of U.S. funding to the PA if “the Palestinians initiate an International Criminal Court (ICC) judicially authorized investigation, or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians.”
Palestinians have violated this law. But instead of exacting the mandatory price, the Congressional piper has gone into hiding to avoid being paid.
The PA first tested Congressional resolve in December 2014 when “the Government of the State of Palestine” claimed that it recognized the jurisdiction of the ICC to prosecute Israeli war crimes “since June 13, 2014.” The date was cynically chosen because Palestinian terrorists kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers on June 12, 2014. Subsequently, on January 2, 2015, the “State of Palestine” acceded to the ICC Statute generally.
