May 5, 2015: Weekly 5 minute update

You may view the 5 minute update this week via audio:

1) Listen to the audio

In this week’s 5 minute update, we focused on:

1) Israel’s response to the Palestinians joining the International Criminal Court and a call by EU Foreign Ministers to label Israel products made in the West Bank

On April 1, the Palestinians officially joined the International Criminal Court. Judge Kuniko Ozaki, acting president of the court, said: “It is a pleasure for me to address this gathering at which we formally welcome the State of Palestine as the 123rd state party to the Rome Statute. By acceding to the Rome Statute, the State of Palestine has entered the growing majority of the world’s nations that have combined their efforts for the purpose of ending impunity for the most serious crimes of concern to humanity.”

Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki, who represented the Palestinians at the ceremony, said that “in the face of [the] great injustice our people are enduring and the repeated crimes committed against [them], Palestine has decided to seek justice, not vengeance.” The Palestinians’ decision to join the court “should be viewed in this light,” Malki said. “Our policy reflects a commitment to international law and universal values.” He added: “We now have a weapon which we can use against any Israeli political and military official. This weapon will serve as a deterrent for Israeli officials and prevent them from perpetrating crimes against the Palestinian people in the future.”

Malki reiterated the Palestinians’ pledge to cooperate with ICC prosecutors and judges to promote the principles and objectives of the court and the Rome Statute. “Palestine remains one of the most important tests of the will and ability of the international community,” he said. “It is a test that the world cannot afford to fail.”

Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat hailed the accession to the court as a “national and historic day” for the Palestinians. The decision to join, he added, marked a “qualitative transformation in the strategy of the Palestinian struggle.” Erekat stressed that the PA leadership would not backtrack on its decision to join the court. “Those who are afraid of facing justice should stop committing crimes,” he said.

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said that the ICC had already begun a preliminary examination of alleged Israeli crimes from the Gaza war last summer. Earlier this year, the Palestinians accepted the court’s jurisdiction dating back to June 2014, to ensure that last summer’s Gaza war between Israel and Hamas will be included in any review. “The legal and technical committees have been extensively working on finalizing the two files,” Erekat said. “We will conduct all practical moves directly after Palestine is officially declared an ICC member.”

ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has already launched a preliminary review to determine if there are grounds for an investigation of possible war crimes in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Olara said there are “no timelines” for how long a preliminary examination can take. Some have taken months, others are continuing after years. Two senior Palestinian officials said the Palestinians will wait for the outcome of that review – which can take months or years – before considering further action. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki said: “I don’t want to disappoint our people but the ICC procedures are slow and long and might face lots of obstacles and challenges and might take years to complete.”

In response, Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said “Palestine” had no right to join the International Criminal Court because there was no Palestinian state under international law. This meant , he said, that the ICC’s chief prosecutor had erred earlier this year in accepting the Palestinian request for a preliminary examination into alleged war crimes stemming from last summer’s Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip. “The Palestinian Authority government, which has established a partnership with the murderous Hamas terrorist organization that carries out war crimes like those carried out by Islamic State, is the last one that can threaten to file claims in the international court in The Hague,” Nachshon stated.

Israel said that the Palestinian decision to join the International Criminal Court is “hypocritical.” saying that Palestinian intentions at the ICC contradicted the goals of the court and would lead to a “destructive politicization” that harms the body’s stature. He added that there was no room for the court, which was established to bring to justice people responsible for the worst crimes and atrocities in the world, to cooperate with those who merely sought to abuse its limited resources. Unilateral Palestinian steps – first and foremost, joining the ICC – blatantly violated the basic principles agreed upon between the sides to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through negotiations, the Foreign Ministry spokesman said. These steps, he continued, highlighted the Palestinian refusal to conduct peace negotiations with Israel.

When the Palestinians decided to apply for membership in the ICC at the end of December, Israel decided that it would withhold the monthly transfer of taxes that Israel collects for the Palestinians. Under existing agreements, Israel collects taxes and customs on behalf of the Palestinians and then transfers the sums. That revenue accounts for about 70 percent of the Palestinians’ budget. Israel withheld these funds from December through March.

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to renew the transfer of the tax revenues on the advice of defense establishment officials who warned of the possible collapse of the PA. Behind the scenes, however, according to sources in Israel, the transfer of the funds was conditioned on the Palestinians maintaining their security coordination with Israel and refraining from filing claims against Israel at the international criminal court. Therefore, Israel released to the PA over NIS 1.37 million in tax revenues. In doing so, withheld NIS 160,000 of the tax revenues to pay for outstanding debts, particularly to the Israel Electric Company to which the PA owes NIS 2 billion.

Initially, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ordered the funds to be returned because money had been deducted to cover debts to Israeli utility companies. Abbas said: “We are returning the money. Either they give it to us in full or we go to arbitration or to the court (ICC). We will not accept anything else.” However, in a compromise agreement, Israel agreed to release the money to the Palestinians in exchange for a partial reduction of the Palestinian $ 500 million debt for electricity and other services.

The United States has been pressuring Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to change his position that the funds would be released after Israel deducts the huge amount of money the Palestinian Authority owes the country. Israel reportedly agreed to the compromise for “humanitarian” reasons and with an eye to ensuring regional stability. It was one of a number of humanitarian steps Israel had taken including authorizing the water hook-up for the new Palestinian city of Rawabi and increasing the volume of water it provided to Gaza, officials said

In other news, 16 out of 28 EU foreign ministers wrote a letter calling on the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, to advance a proposal to mark products made in West Bank settlements and assure “correct and coherent implementation of EU labeling legislation.” After praising Mogherini for renewing the EU’s commitment to the Middle East peace process, the letter draws the foreign policy chief’s attention to a similar letter in 2013 to her predecessor, insisting the implementation of the union’s legislation was an important component of the Mideast policy.

The letter said: “Following the public commitment made by the Council in May and December 2012 and more recently in November 2014, we remain of the view that this is an important step in the full implementation of EU longstanding policy, in relation to the preservation of the two-state solution.” The foreign ministers emphasized that “European consumers must indeed have confidence in knowing the origin of goods they are purchasing. Green Line Israel and Palestinian producers will benefit from this.”

Currently, only a handful of European Union nations have ordered their supermarkets to mark products made in Israeli settlements. As mentioned in the letter, the demand for a unified European policy on the labeling of West Bank goods had been raised several times in recent years.

Israeli officials fired back at the call by 16 European foreign minister to mark products made in the West Bank’s settlements, evoking a Holocaust-era comparisons and claiming the EU was blaming Israel for the stalemate in peace talks. Israel Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called the plan “hypocritical, sanctimonious and cynical,” noting that the murder and expulsion of Palestinians by Islamic State in Syria was “going by quietly” in Europe. He said: “No European foreign minister has demanded an emergency meeting of EU diplomats, of the EU, of the UN Security Council. Other than a few public statements nothing is being done. I have a suggestion for them on how to label (the products),” he said. “They can…label all products from Judea, Samaria and the Golan Heights with a yellow star. I think that is extremely fitting to the cynical and hypocritical position expressed in this letter. We know that what begins as marking Israeli products, quickly deteriorates into an overall boycott of Israeli goods.”

Yesh Atid party head Yair Lapid said:  “This is a de-facto call to boycott Israel,” he said. “According to these guidelines, there is no difference between products which are produced over the 1967 borders and those that are produced within the 1967 borders. This is an irresponsible call that could create havoc on the Israeli economy. This kind of call is a stain on the EU, and the state of Israel has to fight to prevent this kind of initiative,” he said.

Israel’s Energy Minister Silvan Shalom slammed the move as counter-productive, saying they do little to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians. According to him, “such moves began a decade ago and have achieved little.” Shalom said that the move placed on the onus of the stalemate in peace talks on Israel and not the Palestinians.

Israel Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) said that “European Union foreign ministers decided to boycott Israeli produce whose ‘source is in the settlements’! Not Syrian produce of (Bashar al-)Assad, not Gaza (produce) of the Hamas murderers, or of any other murderous terror regime in the world. Only Israeli produce.” Katz condemned “European hypocrisy, nourished by a combination of ancient anti-Semitism and new Islamic influence.

An agreement to divide Jerusalem and establish a PLO state is a tribulation event.

The link to these articles are as follows:

1) Palestinians officially become signatories to International Criminal Court
2) ICC ‘welcomes State of Palestine’ as 123rd member at ceremony
3) Israel blasts Palestinian ICC membership as ‘hypocritical’
4) Palestinians attempting to fast track war crimes suits against Israel at ICC
5) Exclusive: In exchange for freed tax funds, PA won’t pursue Israel over settlements at ICC
6) Abbas rejects Israel’s partial transfer of Palestinian tax revenues
7) Israel Caves in to US and Frees Tax Money for PA without Erasing Debt
8) Israeli officials slam EU bid to mark settlement products
9) Lapid to Mogherini: EU foreign ministers are calling for a de-facto boycott of Israel
10) ‘EU Boycotts Israel, Not Murderers in Syria or Gaza’
11) FM compares labels on settler products to Nazi yellow star

From a Biblical prophetic perspective, the reason why the God of Israel would allow these events to happen is because it will result in the end of the exile of the house of Jacob and the reunification of the 12 tribes of Israel (Ephraim and Judah).

We will to be “watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem” and we will not rest until the God of Israel makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth (Isaiah 62).

Shalom in Yeshua the Messiah,

Eddie Chumney
Hebraic Heritage Ministries Int’l

 

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