Palestinians under pressure not to sue Israel for war crimes: Official

"We know that Israel, of course, was working through the US and through the UK to try and get commitments that Israel will not be taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC)," Hanan Ashrawi, with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said on Wednesday.

She added that Palestinians will not succumb to such pressure and have not made any commitments.

    The comments come a day before acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas is expected to present a request for a non-member observer state at the United Nations.


On November 26, Abbas submitted a resolution to the UN General Assembly requesting the upgrade.

Palestinians need a majority vote from the 193 members of the General Assembly to win the bid.

Currently, as many as 130 nations, which already recognize Palestine as a sovereign state are in favor of the upgrade.

Washington and London are against the proposal but they cannot block it because they cannot use their veto power at the General Assembly. The stance has put Washington and London on a collision course with the rest of the world.

On Tuesday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, France would vote in favor of a “non-member observer state” status for Palestine.

Meanwhile, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told his country’s parliament on Wednesday that Madrid will also support the Palestinian bid.

The observer state status will grant Palestinians access to UN agencies and the International Criminal Court, where they could file formal complaints against the Israeli regime.

The United States and the Tel Aviv regime have spared no means over the past two years to stymie the Palestinian efforts to upgrade the status.

Washington used its veto power to block Palestine’s full membership bid at the UN Security Council in 2011.