Israeli PM to launch media campaign against ICC
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to wage a media campaign against the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda following the court's decision to investigate Tel Avis's crimes in Gaza.
Netanyahu made the decision during a meeting at his office on Sunday, attended by Israeli minister for military affairs Moshe Ya'alon and other senior officials, Israel's newspaper Haaretz reported on Monday.
An unnamed official said after the meeting that Tel Aviv’s campaign is aimed at foiling the Hague-based court’s decision to launch a preliminary investigation into Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians.
The move came following a Friday announcement by Bensouda that her office intends to conduct an “analysis in full independence and impartiality” of war crimes carried out by Israeli military forces, including those committed during its Gaza offensive last summer, in which nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed.
More than 11,100 others, including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people, were injured in the Israeli offensive.
Palestinians, meanwhile, have urged the ICC to also investigate Israel’s illegal settlement construction activities in the occupied Palestinian lands.
Israel has started lobbying member states of the ICC to cut their funding to the body in retaliation for its bid to launch the probe.
On Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced that Tel Aviv hopes to undermine the funding of the tribunal, which is mainly drawn from the 122 member-nations, according to the size of their economies.
"We will demand our friends in Canada, in Australia and in Germany simply to stop funding it," he said in an interview with Israel Radio.
This is while Israel, like the United States, is not a member of the ICC.
MR/NN/HRB
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