Shir Hever: UN Vote and criticism over Gaza attack matter little to Netanyahu who unites with Barak Lieberman who advocates the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens of Israel
The vote ”does give the Palestinian one legal venue that was closed to them up until now: they could decide to sign the Rome Convention of the International Criminal Court in Hague. And this would make all of the Palestinian territories, the occupied Palestinian territory—we’re talking now about the territory that was annexed by Israel in 1967—not annexed—that was conquered by Israel in 1967, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, would become under the—would fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in Hague. And that means that every Israeli soldier or settler who commits a crime in this territory, the Palestinians could ask that this person would be extradited to the international court.
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And basically this was Israel’s way of saying, and Netanyahu’s way of saying as prime minister, we don’t care about international opinion, we don’t care about international pressure, they can’t do anything to us. And this kind of politic is very appealing to a lot of Israelis who realize just how difficult it is for them to explain what Israel is doing and the ongoing occupation, the crimes committed against a civilian population, the discrimination, the apartheid. How can they explain this and say that Israel is a democracy, Israel is part of the developed world, Israel is just another country like most European countries, and so on? The only way that they could reconcile this kind of cognitive dissonance is by saying, actually, the rest of the world doesn’t matter. The recent attack on Gaza was in many ways also an election war.”
