Israel freezes
Palestinian funds, weighs war crime charges
Israel
has decided to withhold critical tax revenue from the Palestinians and is
seeking ways to bring war crimes prosecutions in the US and elsewhere against
President Mahmoud Abbas and other senior figures, Israeli officials said on
Saturday.
The
moves are in retaliation for moves by the Palestinians to join the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, with the aim of
prosecuting Israelis for what they consider war crimes committed on their
territory.
On Friday they delivered documents to U.N.
headquarters in New York on joining the Rome Statute of the ICC and other
global treaties, saying they hoped to achieve “justice for all the victims that
have been killed by Israel, the occupying power”.
The ICC was set up to try war crimes and
crimes against humanity such as genocide. Israel and the United States object
to unilateral approaches by the Palestinians to world bodies, saying they
undermine prospects for negotiating a peaceful settlement of the decades-old
Middle East conflict.
In a first punitive response to Abbas’
approach to the ICC, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided in consultation
with senior ministers on Thursday to withhold a monthly transfer of tax revenue
totalling some 500 million shekels ($125 million), an Israeli official said on
Saturday.
The funds are critical to running the
Palestinian Authority, which has limited self-rule, and paying public sector
salaries. Israel took a similar step in December 2012, freezing revenue
transfers for three months in anger at the Palestinians’ launch of a statehood
recognition campaign at the United Nations.
Under interim peace deals from the 1990s,
Israel collects at least $100 million a month in duties on behalf of the
Palestinian Authority.
In
addition to the revenue freeze, an Israeli official said Israel was “weighing
the possibilities for large-scale prosecution in the United States and
elsewhere” of President Abbas and
other senior Palestinians.
Israel would probably press these cases via
non-governmental groups and pro-Israel legal organisations capable of filing
lawsuits abroad, a second Israeli official said, explaining how the mechanism
might work.
Israel
sees the heads of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank as
collaborators with Hamas militant Islamists in Gaza because of a unity deal they forged in April, the officials said.
Netanyahu has previously warned that
unilateral moves by the Palestinian Authority at the U.N. would expose its
leaders to prosecution over support for Hamas, viewed by Israel as a terrorist
organisation.
Hamas "commits war crimes, shooting at
civilians from civilian-populated areas," one official said, referring to
the war in Gaza last summer in which more than 2,100 Palestinians and more than
70 Israelis died.
Palestinians seek a state in Gaza, the West
Bank and East Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War.
Momentum
to recognise a Palestinian state has built since Abbas succeeded in a
bid for de facto recognition at the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, which made
Palestinians eligible to join the ICC.
The United States, Israel’s main ally,
supports an eventual independent Palestinian state, but has argued against
unilateral moves like Friday’s, saying they could damage the peace process.
Washington sends about $400 million in
economic support to the Palestinians every year. Under U.S. law, that aid would
be cut off if the Palestinians used membership in the ICC to press claims
against Israel.
(REUTERS)
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