Bennett says he won’t meet Abbas because he took ‘Israel’ to ICC
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Friday said that he won’t meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, given Abbas’s decision to bring ‘Israel’ before the International Criminal Court (ICC) on war crimes committed against the Palestinian people.
“As someone who comes from the business world, when someone sues me, I’m not really that nice to him,” Bennett said during an off-the-record Zoom call with leaders from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, according to one of the participants who spoke to The Times of Israel afterward.
Commenting on the meeting between Israeli War Minister Benny Gantz and Abbas, Bennett said that no political breakthrough would be reached while he is in office.
He added that he did not want to “create any illusions” that a political breakthrough is imminent because this could have “negative ramifications”.
Bennett emphasized what he sees as a “dichotomy” in which “either you go all in with a Palestinian state or you do nothing,” according to another call participant, who added that Bennett insisted there was a middle ground.
The ICC’s head prosecutor said in March that she would launch an inquiry into Israeli war crimes committed against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, and the eastern part of occupied Jerusalem since June 13, 2014. The probe was launched as a result of Abbas’ request to The Hague.
