Abbas' choice of which conventions to sign says volumes

While the headlines announce that Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute today in order to be able to join the International Criminal Court, we can learn a lot about the PLO's real goals from some of the other statutes that he is said to gave signed on Wednesday.

They include the Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), plus a Convention on the Safety of UN and Other Personnel.

It appears that these specific conventions, protocols and treaties were chosen for one reason only: to attack Israel diplomatically by bringing up accusation upon accusation, using the procedures around these treaties for the PLO's narrow political aim of demonizing Israel.

This is exactly what the PLO did with the previous groups it joined or has proxies doing its bidding. It has pushed UNESCO into introducing anti-Israel resolutions, and has even used UNESCO to erase Jewish history,  irreversibly politicizing that organization. Its Arab League partners have turned the UN Human Rights Council into a joke with its obsession with Israel.

Based on this list, it seems clear that the PLO is planning to accuse Israel of war crimes, of nuclear proliferation, of endangering UN employees, and of using prohibited weapons, effectively hijacking the agendas of organizations and groups that don't have the political will to fight back for fear of how Arab nations might retaliate.

One can only imagine how thrilled the many people who have worked for years to create these protocols and treaties are to know that their hard work is about to be subverted by the PLO. Since the committees behind these treaties never thought about how their official rules and procedures could be used to subvert the purposes of these treaties, they don't have any defenses against being hijacked.

This is the fruit of rewarding terrorists. While Fatah is today celebrating the 50th anniversary of their first terror attack, the government it heads is using diplomatic terrorism using the legitimacy that nations conferred upon it - to avoid being blackmailed by terror and the oil weapon.

Abbas' signing these treaties is an exact diplomatic equivalent of what the Palestinians have been doing since 1948: doing nothing to build a state but doing everything to destroy one.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Grant Rumley)