Israel’s Lieberman implies some EU parliaments motivated by anti-Semitism on Palestinian issue

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (pictured) said the Oslo diplomatic process had collapsed following the formal application for membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that was filed on Friday (2 January) by the Palestinian Authority but he also declared that it was necessary for Israel to be more proactive to come up with a diplomatic solution. 

The Palestinians moved to join the court after suffering a defeat in the UN Security Council, which rejected a resolution that called on Israel to pull out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem within three years.

“The first conclusion that can be made from the Palestinian Authority’s move is that the Oslo accords have collapsed. But the approach of sitting and doing nothing and the status quo has also collapsed,” Lieberman said while speaking at a conference for diplomats at the foreign ministry in Jerusalem.

"The challenge is to initiate a diplomatic process,’’ he said.  According to him, on the diplomatic front, the western European countries and the EU are Israel’s biggest challenge.  “There is no doubt that the behavior of countries like Sweden and Ireland is the same behavior that they exhibited when they abandoned their close ally Czechoslovakia,” he added, referring to events leading up to WWII.  Sweden and Ireland last year passed motions recognizing a Palestinian state.

“The debates in the Irish and Swedish parliaments, and the amounts of lies, distortions and fabrications of their legislators, is like another chapter out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” Lieberman said.  As a protest against the formal application for PA membership of the ICC. Israel froze the transfer of some NIS 500 million in tax collections to the Palestinian Authority and may sue its officials abroad for war crimes.  “If the Palestinian Authority doesn’t take one step back, I believe that we need to take much more drastic steps up to the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority,” Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz told Army Radio.  “It is inconceivable that we lend a hand to such an authority,” he added.

An Israeli official told Reuters on Saturday that Israel was “weighing the possibilities for large-scale prosecution in the United States and elsewhere” of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other top officials.  The official added that Palestinian leaders “ought to fear legal steps” as a response to their move toward ICC membership.  “(Hamas) … commits war crimes, shooting at civilians from civilian populated areas,” the official said, in reference to the 50-day conflict Israel fought with Hamas and other terror groups in and around Gaza. governmental organizations and pro-Israel legal groups who can file lawsuits abroad.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that it is the Palestinians who will find themselves in the dock for Hamas’s terrorism and indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel if they join the ICC. Netanyahu has accused Abbas of collaborating with the terror group after a unity deal was signed between the two rivals last April.  The unity pact between Abbas and Hamas also prompted Netanyahu to end peace talks with the Palestinian Authority after a nine-month, US-brokered effort.  Israelis point out that all the Palestinian unilateral attempts to gain recognition as a state or accede to international treaties are a clear breach of the Oslo Accords.  The 1995 Interim Agreement between Israel and the PLO, of which the European Union is one of the witnesses, established that: “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations.”

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