JERUSALEM
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday described a Palestinian Authority (PA) request for Palestinian membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a "flagrant violation of [past] agreements."
"We expect the ICC to flatly reject the PA's hypocritical request to join it," Netanyahu spokesman Ofir Gendelman said on Twitter.
"It [the PA] is not a state, but an entity that has a pact with a terrorist organization," Gendelman said, in reference to Palestinian faction Hamas.
"The PA's appeal to the ICC is a flagrant violation of the agreements that it has signed with Israel with the backing of the international community," the spokesman added.
On Thursday, PA President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute, which would allow the PA to raise a lawsuit against Israel at The Hague-based tribunal.
The move came only hours after the UN Security Council rejected a Palestinian draft resolution calling for a three-year deadline for ending Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land.
In a Thursday statement, Netanyahu said: "We expect the ICC to reject outright the PA's hypocritical act because the PA is not a state."
He issued the statement following a cabinet meeting convened to discuss Israel's reaction to Abbas's signing of the Rome Statue.
www.aa.com.tr/en
