Legal Affairs
“It would be better for the public to make this ruling,” says Blue and White MK Ofer Shelah after Israel’s High Court announces it will debate whether an indicted Knesset member may form a government.
The ICC “ignores international law by inventing a Palestinian state that does not exist and creates a crime that no one in international law has ever been charged with before: the crime of people living in places,” said Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason Antonin Scalia Law School.
Israel’s High Court of Justice announces that it will debate the question of whether or not an indicted Knesset member can form a government, giving Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit 48 hours to submit his legal opinion on the issue.
At the ceremony, the Israeli premier referred to the story of Hanukkah and compared the Jewish war of liberation against the anti-Semitic Greeks to the ICC’s recent announcement of a forthcoming investigation of Israel for “war crimes.”
Al-Ghabin, who has written for Israeli newspapers and uses social media to praise Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, supports “direct and unconditional” ties with Israel, calling it “a strategic choice.”
“While we are moving forward in new areas of hope and peace with our Arab neighbors, the ICC in The Hague has taken a step backwards,” says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said, “The Palestinians are seeking to breach the framework agreed to by the parties and to push the court to determine political issues that should be resolved by negotiations and not criminal proceedings.”
The U.S. Justice Department announced an eight-count indictment of an Indonesian businessman and three Indonesian-based companies for violating U.S. sanctions against Iran.
Law professor Eugene Kontorovich said for the first time, the ICC has raised a terror program as a possible war crime; still, that “should not whitewash or smokescreen their bias against Israel and the great unlikelihood that they will take any serious action against the Palestinians.”
Israel’s indicted premier announces that he will vacate the health, welfare, agriculture and Diaspora affairs portfolios, and appoint new ministers following an NGO petition to the Supreme Court.
Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riad Malki said the report was “based on misleading narratives of a political nature ... rather than an objective and accurate description of the relevant facts.”
More than 100 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. Secretary Mike Pompeo, expressing “strong disagreement” with the State Department’s new policy and urged him to “reverse this policy decision immediately.”
