Netanyahu makes ICC decision campaign issue
While Europeans are suspending their criticisms until after the Israeli elections in fear of providing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with political ammunition, the ICC decision to open an investigation is being used by the Israeli right to present the Europeans as enemies.
The Jan. 16 announcement by Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, did not surprise Israel’s political echelon. Right after the Palestinians signed the Rome Statute on Dec. 31, advisers to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman surmised that the question was not whether the prosecutor would decide on a probe against Israel, but when. Their sharp reactions to the prosecutor’s decision to open a preliminary investigation into the possibility of indicting Israel for war crimes in the Palestinian territories were ready ahead of time in the prime minister’s office and the Foreign Ministry. The opinions provided by the professionals, according to which Israeli civilians and soldiers would be able to roam the world freely without fear of arrest for quite a long time, fell on deaf ears.
Nor were the politicians impressed by the fact that the court has for years been treading water with similar decisions to open investigations in eight countries (Honduras, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, Guinea and Nigeria). They did not want to hear that with regard to harming civilians in a military confrontation, Israel is in “good” company, along with the United States, Russia and the United Kingdom, and that Washington and Moscow would apparently do everything possible to derail the investigation.
So why are the leaders of the right wing making such a colossal fuss over an unhatched egg, which may never hatch? Ask former President Shimon Peres. He will tell you that a terror attack in Jericho on the eve of the 1984 election, in which a woman and her three children were burned to death by a firebomb thrown at an Israeli bus, robbed him of the premiership. That tragic event was widely perceived as having distanced the undecided voters from the camp that preached in favor of an arrangement with the Palestinian peace camp. These decisive votes fell into the hands of the right wing, which was viewed as being too smart to fall for illusions of peace and knowledgeable about handling the Arab enemy.
The same thing happened with the 1996 election, when a series of suicide attacks caused Nobel Peace Prize laureate Peres to lose to the young and inexperienced Netanyahu. The Likud Party under late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s leadership came back to power in 2001 riding the waves of anxiety spawned by the terrorist attacks of the second intifada, borne on the wind of the “no [Palestinian] partner” mantra, courtesy of former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
