Legal Affairs
The request, which was submitted just hours before a midnight deadline on Wednesday, will likely postpone the prime minister’s trial until after Israel’s March 2 election.
The Arab world’s largest bank is being sued in Israel for more than $5.7 billion for allegedly supporting and financing terrorist attacks from 1995 to 2005 that killed hundreds of Israelis and left thousands of people wounded.
Instead, Israel’s attorney general suggested that the High Court of Justice debate on Dec. 31 whether the courts should decide the issue before the election.
Israeli NGO Adalah says the International Criminal Court “made the right decision” with regard to prosecuting Israel for war crimes and is “prepared to submit legal material” to that end.
With European funding earmarked for the purpose, Israeli NGOs such as B’Tselem have ceaselessly attacked Israel’s Supreme Court with the aim of rendering the Jewish state vulnerable to prosecution in the International Criminal Court.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced in September that he planned to establish sovereignty in the Jordan Valley if his Likud Party would win the elections.
“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.
