PALESTINIAN Authority chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said during an interview last Friday, that Palestine would become a member of the International Criminal Court by March.
The statements, which come after days of heavy criticism of the PA for the failure to pass a UN resolution on Palestine statehood, came during a live interview on the Lebanese channel al-Mayadeen.
Erekat also said that the Palestinian leadership knew the UN Palestine statehood resolution would fail but insisted on it anyway in order to send a message to Washington.
‘Washington knew that if it worked to ensure the rejection of the resolution, we would sign (letters) to join international organizations and that is what happened,’ he said, pointing out that President Abbas had signed accession letters for nearly two dozen treaties including the International Criminal Court.
The resolution would have set a 2017 deadline for the end of the Israeli occupation and called for Palestinian statehood.
The US long maintained that it would reject any such resolution put forward by the Palestinians for not adequately addressing Israel’s ‘security needs,’ but the US did not need to use its veto since the resolution did not gain the nine out of 15 votes necessary to reach that stage.
‘We had nine votes but Nigeria changed its stand at the last minute,’ he said. ‘In an unusual event,’ he added, ‘the Arabs spoke with one voice and supported the Palestinian resolution.’
Erekat said that in the wake of the vote, a ‘campaign had been launched justifying Israel’s stance and blaming the Palestinian leadership. He rejected this blame, however, saying that he would meet with the US ambassador on Friday to demand a clarification of the US stance.
He pointed out that the Palestinian leadership was currently ‘reconsidering the totality of our relationship with Israel, including security coordination,’ he said, referring to the policy by which Palestinian authorities withdraw their security forces every time the Israeli military wants to enter areas under Palestinian control, namely areas A and B.
‘We no longer have a legal, political, nor economic state on the ground and Israel wants us to be an authority without any authority,’ he added.
Palestinian leaders have repeatedly threatened to end security coordination with Israel or even ‘dissolve’ the PA and force Israel to take full control – including in early December when a PA official died after being beaten by an Israeli soldier – but have rarely acted on it.
Security coordination is only applicable in Area A, the 20 percent of the West Bank where Palestinians have civil and security control. In the other 80 percent of the West Bank, Israeli forces maintain constant security control.
Erekat said that Palestine would accede to all of the treaties and conventions president Abbas signed on December 31st within the next 30-90 days, and would become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March.
He said that no one could prevent Palestine from joining the agreements that were signed as leadership ‘chose international organizations that do not need voting to be joined in order to prevent Israel from thwarting the process.’
Erekat added that the occupation of the West Bank and the summer Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip that left more than 2,200 dead will be the major topics discussed at the ICC.
He said Palestinian laws will be adjusted to match the joined international organizations as well.
He will be handing the US ambassador a message on Friday to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which was also handed to Britain and Russia, he added.
Any new peace negotiations or talks with Israel, he said, should be based on a decision by the Security Council which will define solution standards under a timeline, thus rejecting the open-ended negotiations the US has long pushed upon Palestinian leaders.
Meanwhile, 2014 has been the toughest year on record for Palestinian fishermen in the Gaza Strip, a union official reported..
They faced recurring attacks before, during, and after Israel’s summer offensive that left around 2,200 dead, and the periodic tightening of restrictions on their livelihoods has cost them millions.
Head of the Gaza Fishermen’s Union, Nizar Ayyash, told Ma’an that the fishing sector in Gaza lost an estimated $9 million, particularly as a result of the fact that Israeli forces prevented the Strip’s 4,000 fishermen from engaging in any fishing during the 50-day summer war.
This decline in revenues comes on top of the restrictions imposed for the last eight years as part of the Israeli siege, which severely limited the range Palestinians can fish in and led to a poverty rate around 90 percent for fishermen, even before the war.
Ayyash said that while previously fishermen used to catch 4,000 tons of fish, the total had since fallen to less than 1,500 tons.
The economic hit Palestinian fishermen have taken over the past year comes in addition to the massive destruction of property they faced during the July-August conflict.
Harbours used by fishermen were targeted and destroyed by Israeli forces during the summer offensive, with 36 fishermen’s storage rooms destroyed and three partially damaged.
52 boats were also destroyed, in addition to the fishermen’s possessions being burned in the destruction.
Israel also detained Palestinians engaged in fishing numerous times during the year, carrying out 18 raids across the Strip in which 56 fishermen were detained. They also confiscated 21 boats and 14 fishing nets. Despite the August ceasefire agreement, Israel resumed targeting Gazan fishermen soon after.
Although the agreement ostensibly increased the fishing zone allotted to Palestinians from three nautical miles to six and was meant to push it to twelve, fishermen say that so far Israel has kept it at six and has even attacked within that limit.
All this despite the fact that the zone is technically set at 20 nautical miles, according to the Oslo agreements signed between Israel and the PA in the early 1990s.
Researcher in the social and economic rights department of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Azzam Shaath, said that 2014 had been the most difficult year on record for fishermen.
Shaath added that he hoped that the ‘fishermen’s suffering would end after the Israeli offensive on Gaza since the peace agreement included them, but that did not happen and their suffering became worse since Israel did not commit to the agreement and prevented fishermen from doing their jobs.’
Gaza is home to an estimated 1.8 million Palestinians. It endured unprecedented destruction during the 50-day war.
Unlike during the 2012 attacks, the last full-scale assault on Gaza, Israel launched a ground invasion that devastated the Strip, particularly in areas bordering the south of present-day Israel.
The United Nations monitoring group OCHA estimates that 2,257 Palestinians were killed as a result of the fighting, including 1,563 civilians. Sixty-six Israeli soldiers and seven civilians were also killed.
For Palestinians in Gaza, the war meant ‘a record number of civilian casualties, the devastation of civilian buildings and infrastructure, and large scale displacement,’ according to OCHA. Some 100,000 persons are still displaced, living in schools, shelters or with host families.
On Saturday, 20 December, the day after a rocket fired by Palestinian fighters landed in an empty field in southern Israel, the Israeli military executed its first airstrike on Gaza since the 26 August truce.
Israeli forces have violated the ceasefire — including regularly firing live ammunition on Palestinians in Gaza — on a nearly daily basis since the truce.
Brad Parker, attorney and international advocacy officer for Defence for Children International—Palestine, has explained that Israel’s attacks in Gaza have consistently been ‘characterized by a complete disregard of international humanitarian law.’
Explaining that an estimated half of Gaza’s total population is under eighteen years old, Parker described the summer war’s impact on children as ‘appalling’. He added that it ‘should not shock anyone given the unprecedented scale of destruction, death and displacement kids in Gaza have been subjected to.
‘Children in Gaza witnessed the killing and maiming of their parents, siblings and other family members, and experienced the systematic destruction of their homes, schools and communities,’ he said.
Although the latest war on Gaza ended with a ceasefire, Parker also warned that the suffering will continue, particularly for children, as long as Israel’s brutal seven-year blockade on Gaza remains intact.
‘While widespread military operations have ended, the international community has failed to successfully pressure Israel to lift the blockade, which all but ensures the situation will continue to deteriorate for children in Gaza,’ Parker said.
Nearly four months after the summer attacks ended, much of Gaza’s infrastructure still remains in shambles. In cities, towns and villages across the territory, entire neighbourhoods are flattened. Due to strict Israeli restrictions and a lack of international action, reconstruction has hardly begun in most places.
At a donors’ conference after the war, $5.4 billion was pledged for Gaza’s reconstruction, mostly by Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States and the European Union. Only approximately half of that sum will go to Gaza’s reconstruction; the rest will instead be used to fill gaps in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority’s budget.
Meanwhile, only two percent of the pledged reconstruction aid has been delivered thus far. ‘We have received funding and pledges of approximately $100 million for shelter and repair,’ said Robert Turner, director of operations for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees.
As a result of the ongoing Israeli blockade, which enjoys the support of the US-backed dictatorship in Egypt, construction supplies, such as steel and concrete, have trickled into the territory in quantities that don’t even come close to meeting Gaza’s immediate needs.
