PA wants to take Friedman to International Criminal Court

Furious over Friedman’s statement that Israel has the right to retain some of Judea and Samaria, Palestinians and extreme leftists are calling for the American envoy to be fired.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Foreign Ministry announced Sunday that it was considering filing a complaint with the International Criminal Court (ICC) against U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

The impetus for officially considering such a blatantly anti-U.S. move was Friedman’s interview, published in The New York Times on Saturday, in which he said that “under certain circumstances, I think that Israel has the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank. Certainly Israel’s entitled to retain some portion of it.”

The statement infuriated the Palestinians and extreme left-wing Jewish organizations J Street and Peace Now, who all called for the ambassador to be dismissed.

The Palestinian foreign ministry called Friedman’s statements “racist.”

“We are studying whether his racist rhetoric is sufficient to file a complaint against him with the International Criminal Court for trying to impose his racist visions and threatening peace and security in the region, as well as exposing the Palestinian people to several dangers and conspiracies,” it said in a statement.

According to Ramallah, the disputed territory in question is “occupied,” and, as its statement continued, “International law prohibits the annexation of land by force.”

The Foreign Ministry also denigrated the pro-Israel ambassador personally and called him a lackey of the Jewish state.

“This person who is illiterate in politics, history and geography, and who belongs to the state of the settlements… has nothing to do with logic, justice or law unless they serve the occupation state which he is eager to defend by all means,” the ministry said.

For its part, Hamas appealed to its members to carry out terror attacks in Judea and Samaria in response to Friedman’s remarks and called on the PA to stop its security coordination with Israel in the area.