(Times of Israel) Raphael Ahren - According to Alan Baker, a former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Palestinian threat of a unilateral statehood drive is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. "This is a big bluff; it's just an empty threat," he said. "So the Palestinians will go to the International Health Organization, the International Postal Union and the Civil Aviation Authority. So what? That won't give them statehood. It won't make a difference, because Israel is still sitting in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and any change can only come about as the result of a negotiation process." Palestinian attempts to influence the agendas of UN bodies actually did more damage to those organs than to Israel's interests, he posited. Many diplomats and parliamentarians have told him that the international community is becoming "increasingly fed up" with Palestinians trying to appropriate UN organizations for their political purposes and, in the process, distracting those bodies from their actual jobs. Baker called the specter of an International Criminal Court (ICC) trial against Israel "a completely empty and utterly unrealistic threat." Even if the court's prosecutor ruled that "Palestine" could file a complaint against Israeli leaders for war crimes, an investigation would have zero chances of succeeding because the Palestinians would need to prove that the alleged offenses took place on Palestinian sovereign territory.
2014-01-08 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive