Six Reasons Interpol’s Decision to Admit ‘Palestine’ Is Dangerous

On Wednesday, the international police organization Interpol voted to admit the nonexistent “State of Palestine” despite strong Israeli objections.

Below, in no particular order, are six reasons this decision is dangerous for the U.S., Israel and the international community.

1 – The terror-tied Palestinian Authority police will gain access to Interpol information about criminal activities.

As Foreign Policy noted:

Interpol membership will bring several benefits to Palestinian police. They’ll get access to information that other police agencies around the world have shared about criminal activity. …

Bruno Min, a legal and policy officer at Fair Trials, a Europe-based human rights organization with a special focus on Interpol, said that Israel may also be concerned about the sharing of sensitive data.

“A lot of interpol’s work is about being able to share data,” Min told Foreign Policy. “Perhaps they might have concerns that any information that they try to disseminate through Interpol’s channels, Palestine would now have access to.”

What Foreign Policy and scores of other news media outlets covering the Interpol vote failed to report is that PA security forces are themselves closely associated with terrorist organizations, raising immediate security concerns about the illicit accessing of policing information.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah’s so-called military wing, is a terrorist group responsible for scores of suicide bombings, shootings and rocket attacks.  I have reported over the years how Brigades members have doubled as members of Fatah security forces, with some serving in senior positions.

In one of many examples, PA President Mahmoud Abbas previously appointed senior Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades leader Mahmoud Damra commander of Force 17, the presidential guard unit. Damra was on Israel’s most wanted list for his direct involvement in numerous attacks targeting Israelis. Damra was subsequently appointed Abbas’s advisor.

In my 2007 book, Schmoozing with Terrorists, I documented other examples of Brigades members joining Fatah’s security forces, including:

• Ala Senakreh, former chief of the Brigades in the city of Nablus. Senakreh’s cell is accused of sending at least four suicide bombers into Israel, including a 2006 attack in Tel Aviv that killed nine Israelis and American teenager Daniel Wultz.
• Ramadan Addassi, former chief of the Brigades in the Anskar refugee camp in the northern West Bank plus several Brigades leaders in the camp.
• Abu Yousuf, chief of the Brigades in Ramallah plus dozens of Ramallah-based Brigades members. Yousuf is accused of participating in anti-Israel terrorism, including shootings, attacks against Israeli forces operating in Ramallah and a shooting attack in northern Samaria in December 2000 that killed the leader of the ultra-nationalist Kahane Chai organization, Benyamin Kahane.

2 – Hamas police may soon be part of the Palestinian Authority government that just joined Interpol.

The Palestinian Authority already contributes to the salaries of police forces in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The PA and Hamas are engaged in advanced, Egypt-brokered reconciliation talks seeking to create a Hamas-Fatah unity government.

3 – The PA can use Interpol to issue arrest warrants for Israeli officials.

Interpol members have the ability to issue “red notices,” international warrants requesting the extradition of alleged criminals. While these warrants are nonbinding, they can create a host of problems for Israeli officials who travel or are based abroad. An unfriendly country may attempt to use a warrant to extradite an Israeli.

The PA has already attempted to utilize trumped up war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court. Scandalously, last year former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was summoned by British police when she visited London after Palestinian activists there used a local court to obtain an arrest warrant using politicized charges related to Israel’s defensive 2008-2009 war in the Gaza Strip.

4 – In recognizing a nonexistent state, Interpol legitimized the fake Palestinian narrative of “Palestine.”

It is not immediately clear what Palestine actually is. Such a state does not exist. There has never been a state of Palestine.

The local Arabs didn’t even refer to themselves as “Palestinian” until many years after Israel’s creation in 1948. In fact, as Jewish Virtual Library notes, “Leading up to Israel’s independence in 1948, it was common for the international press to label Jews, not Arabs, living in the mandate as Palestinians.”

5 – At least as far as the international policing agency is concerned, Interpol seemingly granted the Palestinians de facto sovereignty over Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The Palestinians claim those territories as part of a future state, including all of eastern Jerusalem, which encompasses the Western Wall, Temple Mount and the Old City. Ostensibly, the nonexistent state of “Palestine” incorporates all of these territories.

6 – Interpol’s actions serve as a diplomatic assault on the Jewish state and will further Palestinian intransigence regarding negotiations with Israel.

The PA claims they need to take their campaign for statehood to international entities like Interpol and the United Nations because Israel refuses to give them a state. In reality, the PA is using these entities as part of a diplomatic assault against Israel while the Palestinians have repeatedly refused successive Israeli offers of a state.

Those offers predate the existence of the so-called Palestinians. After Israel was founded in 1948, a military coalition of Arab nations immediately formed to wage war on the new Jewish state. Arab states waged the war after refusing to accept U.N. Resolution 181, which called for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. The Jews immediately accepted the resolution, but the Arabs forthrightly rejected the plan, launching a war to destroy the Jewish state.

The Palestinian Authority has since rejected every Israeli offer of a state. State offers were made at Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, the Annapolis Conference in 2007 and more offers were made in 2008. It was recently reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quietly made another such offer in 2014. In each of these cases, the PA refused generous Israeli offers of statehood and bolted negotiations without counter offers.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.