There’s nothing that a proud Israeli such as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, hates more than being a sucker. The prime minister even knows how to say in Farsi, “We are not suckers.” An Israeli who stands tall like Netanyahu does not ignore an attempt by the cheeky neighbors to turn the West Bank and East Jerusalem — or rather, Judea and Samaria and united Jerusalem, Israel’s eternal capital — into an independent Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. A “strong leader” such as Netanyahu does not just move on after the Palestinian Authority (PA) dares request to join the International Criminal Court (ICC). He’s not some sort of defeatist who gives thanks for rain whenever someone spits at him. All he needs now is Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett to produce a clip portraying him as a leftist who apologizes to non-Jews.

It is worth noting Netanyahu is not threatening that if the Palestinians submit complaints of Israeli war crimes to the ICC, they will be forced to contend with far worse complaints Israel will submit against them. The prime minister undoubtedly understands that the very act of complaint to the court against a resident of the PA, based on the Rome Statute, constitutes recognition that the PA is a state. In November 2012, Israel even strenuously objected to the upgrading of the PA’s status from that of observer to a nonmember state at the UN. A senior Foreign Ministry official told Al-Monitor over the weekend that although Israel has an excellent “case” against the PA, especially given that it formed a reconciliation government with Hamas, legal experts recommend keeping a safe distance from the ICC.

Absent an international legal enforcement avenue, the Israeli government has assumed the right to impose punishments on the Palestinian side, as a lesson for all to see. The problem is that the Palestinian appeal to the UN on Dec. 31 and their decision to join the ICC, prove that freezing tax revenues is not effective punishment. In 2012, Israel also claimed that the Palestinian move was a “unilateral step” in violation of the Oslo Accord. Then, too, the government decided to hit the Palestinians where they hurt — in their pocket — and froze the transfer of the taxes it collects on their behalf at the border crossings. Nonetheless, after the diplomatic initiative of US Secretary of State John Kerry ran aground, and after the Arab Peace Initiative was harnessed onto the Israeli election campaign, the Palestinians renewed their struggle in the international arena.

As mentioned here, in 2002, during the final stages of the second intifada, then-military Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon said that Israel’s paramount goal was to etch the Palestinian consciousness with the understanding ''that terrorism and violence will not defeat us, will not make us fold.” President Mahmoud Abbas did not require Ya’alon’s musings to internalize the obvious fact that the Palestinians were unable to defeat the strongest army in the Middle East. Since replacing late PLO leader Yasser Arafat as president, Abbas has been doing everything possible — openly and covertly — to foil terror and to replace violence with diplomacy. Ya’alon is now a senior member of a government that wishes to etch in the Palestinian consciousness that the use of what Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman calls “diplomatic terrorism” will also cost them dearly.