Israel has little to fear from the Palestinian Authority (PA) signing the Rome Statute to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stated Wednesday night - and the PA has everything to lose.
"The one who should fear the International Criminal Court at the Hague is the Palestinian Authority, which is in a unity government with Hamas, a declared terrorist organization like ISIS that commits war crimes," Netanyahu stated.
"We will take steps in response and we will defend the soldiers of the IDF, the most moral army in the world," he continued. "We will repel this latest effort to force diktats on us, just as we have repelled the Palestinian turn to the UN Security Council."
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas signed the Statute on Wednesday, where it was shown throughout the PA on a live television broadcast.
Abbas has had the opportunity to sign the Statute since the PA won recognition as a UN observer state in 2012.
He may have hesitated, however, due to the risks the PA itself faces of persecution.
In a recent interview, the PA's envoy to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) admitted the PA has no hope of pressing charges against Israel in international courts - because Palestinian terrorist groups are far worse violators of international law themselves.
The PA's ruling terror organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization, already faces criminal charges being levied against it in the US court system for terror attacks it committed during the early 2000s.
The desperate move follows the PA exhausting other international means of prosecuting Israel, after its draft resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Judea-Samaria failed in a UN Security Council vote Tuesday night.