Senior Palestinian official reveals collusion between the International Criminal Court and the Palestinians trying to smear Israel with war crimes.
By Paul Shindman, World Israel News
An Israeli watchdog group revealed Wednesday that the International Criminal Court in the Hague has been secretly collaborating with the Palestinian Authority to investigate Israel in the Palestinian propaganda war against the Jewish State.
Last week, the ICC announced its launch of an investigation against Israel, but the Palestinian Authority’s reaction to the decision “exposed the level of collusion between the two,” said Maurice Hirsch, director of Legal Strategies at Palestinian Media Watch, an organization that monitors what the Palestinians are saying in Arabic that they don’t want people to hear in English.
Hirsch said the court and its organs are meant to be independent and deal equally with all potential suspects, but instead of equality, the ICC has been treating the PA almost as an advisor to the court.
“Preferential treatment, such as open collusion with one set of suspects, fundamentally undermines not only the requirements of justice the court is meant to provide, but also the appearance of justice being done,” Hirsch said on the PMW website, where he provided translations of statements from Palestinian officials showing their influence on the court
Hirsch noted that the ICC overruled international legal experts and decided that a “State of Palestine” actually exists. The prosecutor is not doing its job “to consider all offenses that may have been committed within that area, and by all parties,” he said.
The court is not going after the Palestinians, but only Israel and possibly considering some actions by Hamas, thereby totally leaving out the Palestinian Authority run by Fatah, the main group in the Palestine Liberation Organization that openly admits to decades of terror attacks around the world.
“Showing preference and colluding with potential suspects to the point where those suspects – i.e. the Palestinians – are given a feeling of impunity, fundamentally undermines both justice and the perception of justice,” Hirsch said.
“Crimes committed by the PA officials would potentially include the incitement to murder Israelis and the PA policy of paying financial rewards to terrorists and their families. The potential crimes of other Palestinian terrorist groups, such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, would include inciting and conducting systematic attacks on Israel’s civilian population, including murder, and indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel’s civilian population,” he added.
But an interview on the official Palestinian Authority TV station with PA Minister of Foreign Affairs Riyad Al-Malki exposed that the PA and the ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, have been in constant contact and that Bensouda even gave the PA advance notice of her decision to formally open an investigation against Israel, asking that the PA ”keep it secret.”
“Yes, we are in constant contact with her… and her office from the first moment when we set foot in the ICC in 2014… [We’re in touch] directly or indirectly,” Al-Malki said. “We made contact before the announcement [of the ICC investigation], and we were informed a number of hours before the announcement that there will be an announcement. We knew about this, but they asked us to keep it secret.”
Hirsch, a legal expert and former top prosecutor of terrorists for the IDF, said Al-Malki’s revelation shows the bias of the ICC even before an investigation starts.
“The level of collusion between the PA and the prosecutor would appear to explain the general sense within the PA that its personnel, and other Palestinian terrorists, are and will remain immune from investigation,” Hirsch said.
“The latest statements regarding the level of collusion between the ICC prosecutor and the PA,confirm previous reports by Palestinian Media Watch, which highlighted the meetings held between the prosecutor and PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Shtayyeh. They also appear to reflect the PA patronage of the other Palestinian terror groups that were members in the PA-organized committee that was in contact with the Prosecutor. ”
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