After a U.N. draft resolution calling for Palestinian statehood failed to garner enough votes to pass on Tuesday, the Palestinians officially made good on a longstanding threat and joined the International Criminal Court, which could result in the pursuit of war crimes prosecutions against Israel.
President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) document along with 17 other international treaties during a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, reported the Financial Times.
"We want to complain. There's aggression against us, against our land. The Security Council disappointed us," Abbas said as he prepared to meet Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, according to Reuters.
The move came shortly after the U.N. Security Council failed to adopt the Arab coalition's draft resolution calling for the creation of an independent Palestinian state by the end of 2017. Only the U.S. and Australia voted against the resolution, five countries withheld votes, and eight voted in favor.
As a result, after long threatening to do so, Palestinian officials decided to finally join the ICC, where it will seek to pursue war crimes charges against Israel for its deadly military operations in the Gaza Strip and continuing occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The most recent 50-day war between Israel and Hamas resulted in the death of more than 2,100 Palestinians, many children, and 72 Israelis, reported the Financial Times.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the decision to join the ICC by saying that Israel's soldiers are "the most moral army in the world" and that the country would take "retaliatory steps."
"The one who needs to fear the International Criminal Court in the Hague is the Palestinian Authority, which has a unity government with Hamas, a terror organization like (the Islamic State group) which commits war crimes," Netanyahu continued.
The U.S. joined Israeli in its discontent, with State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez saying the Palestinian decision will be "counter-productive and do nothing to further the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a sovereign and independent state."
"It will badly damage the atmosphere with the very people with whom they ultimately need to make peace."
