Artiklar från Palestinian Media Watch

PA: Jewish history in Jerusalem is "fables and myths" and "imaginary history"

• Israel is looking for "proof of the alleged Temple," invents "imaginary history… in Jerusalem"
   
• "The land of Palestine is an Islamic waqf (i.e., an inalienable religious endowment in Islamic law) and no one... would relinquish a grain of its soil"
   
• PA: Jews "defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque" (i.e., the Temple Mount)

Abbas' deception at the UN: PA claims to recognize Israel, yet message to Palestinians is that all of Israel is "Palestine"

• Abbas claims to UN: “We recognize Israel”
   
• Yet on the same day, Abbas' deputy to Palestinians: All Israel is “Palestine”
   
• Political strategy: “Stages Plan”
  Senior Fatah official says Fatah's goal is “Palestine” replacing Israel: “Palestine” on the 1967 borders is “an intermediate statement”
   
• Media:
  Official PA daily crossword puzzle teaches the Galilee in northern Israel is in “Palestine”
   
• Education:
  Activists to distribute the PA’s map of “Palestine” that erases all of Israel in Palestinian schools

PMW submits brief to the International Criminal Court

In the submission, (click here to read the submission in PDF format) we raised a number of points:

1) There is no "State of Palestine.” In the brief, we explain how the Palestinian entity fails to meet what are known as the “Montevideo Criteria”. These are the internationally applied criteria for deciding whether a certain entity can be recognized as a State.

2) The reliance of the ICC Prosecutor on highly political United Nations General Assembly resolutions is mistaken and without legal basis.

3) The Oslo Accords left a number of subjects open for further negotiations between Israel and the PLO, including Jerusalem, settlements, Palestinian refugees, and borders. Accordingly, it would be impossible to recognize a "State of Palestine" that encompasses all of the territories that came under Israeli control in 1967.

4) The Prosecutor's request to demarcate the "borders" of the "State of Palestine" based on what the Palestinians consistently refer to as the "1967 borders" is erroneous and misleading. The so-called “1967 borders” are really the armistice lines drawn in 1949 at the end of Israel’s War of Independence. While Israel was willing to accept these lines as the borders of the new State of Israel, it was the Arab counties that adamantly refused. They remained cease-fire lines until they were replaced by new cease-fire lines after the 1967 Six Day –War.

5) The Oslo Accords never granted the PA any criminal jurisdiction over Israelis and accordingly, the PA cannot delegate to the ICC any criminal jurisdiction regarding Israelis. This is of fundamental importance, since the ICC operates on the basis of delegation of a state’s criminal jurisdiction. If no jurisdiction existed, then no jurisdiction can be delegated.

6) While the PA may have been given limited powers and jurisdiction in certain parts of the area referred to in UN documents as “Judea and Samaria”, no such power or jurisdiction was granted to the PA over all of Judea and Samaria or in any part of Jerusalem.

7) While the ICC Prosecutor’s politically motivated machinations may have brought her to demarcate the borders of the “State of Palestine" based on the non-existent "1967 borders", the Palestinian leadership rejects this limitation of the geographical size of the "State of Palestine". To support this argument the brief referred to numerous such statements documented by PMW.