On December 30, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas signed twenty different international conventions, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The name of the statute refers to the 1998 conference that established the treaty-based court, which began operations in 2002.

In principle, the PA’s move enables the ICC to assert jurisdiction over future developments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and empowers any signatory to the Rome Statute — currently including 160 countries — to claim that Israel should be brought to the court on charges of war crimes. Palestinian officials have said that they want the ICC to investigate Israel’s settlement policies. Once any such inquiries were concluded, it would be up to the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, whether to move forward with actual cases against Israeli officials.

Abbas’s move comes on the heels of his failure last week to garner the votes needed for the UN Security Council to approve Palestinian statehood. Although that failure averted a potentially controversial U.S. veto, the ICC move raises other thorny problems.

ABBAS-NETANYAHU RELATIONS REACH NEW NADIR

While the Israeli-Palestinian relationship has not exactly known many highs in recent years, one could argue that the signing of the Rome Statute sends diplomacy to a new low, at least under the current leadership. The ICC is designed to deal with deliberate war crimes, such as state officials carrying out genocidal policies, so Israelis would not take too kindly to being painted with that brush if cases were brought against their leaders.

Moreover, the PA’s latest move creates an entirely new arena for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, casting the often-adversarial relationship in criminal terms. As part of the ICC’s effort to apply a profound moral stain on those it convicts, any future Israeli prosecutions in The Hague would be designed to ensure that the country’s political and military leadership could not travel, among other limitations. In that vein, the Palestinians and their sympathizers would no doubt use any ICC conviction as further justification for the ongoing boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Abbas may also be counting on one advantage conferred by signing the Rome Statute: technically, the PA does not have to be the one that actually submits the complaint to the ICC, since any motions related to the West Bank and Gaza can now be carried forward by any party.

On a personal level, the move is bound to deepen the mutual loathing between Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Abbas, likely shutting down any political space for further negotiations any time soon. And if negotiations are no longer feasible between Abbas and Netanyahu, it may move the entire Israeli-Palestinian discourse toward unilateralism as long as they remain in office.

Read the article in full at the Washington Institute.