But when the "State of Palestine" acceded to the ICC in 2015, it carried virtually no risk to itself - only potential reward.
As Nimrod Karin wrote at the time in Opinio Juris:
The question therefore becomes just how risky the Palestinian ICC bid really is, and how risky the Palestinians thought it was when they made it, and we can only speculate with regard to both of these questions. My educated guess here is that the ICC bid isn’t that much of a risk for the Palestinians, or at least that it’s not perceived as such by the Palestinians, least of all by the relevant decision-makers, i.e. Abbas and his concentric power circles of PA-PLO-Fatah. I think that by now it’s more than obvious that for that side of the Palestinian internal conflict the best possible scenario is an international cop stepping in to take care of Hamas. If Hamas leaders ever get indicted by the ICC, Abbas would be finally free of the whole unity charade, and at absolutely no internal political cost for him, because Abbas wouldn’t face the dilemma of whether or not to extradite suspects or accept external investigation – Abbas has no de facto authority or control whatsoever over either the suspects or the actual “scene(s) of the crime(s)”. This means that the “Abbas side” is not only strategically superior in this respect, but a free-rider;....this might not have been so easy for the “Abbas side,” if the new ad hoc declaration had stuck to the July 1, 2002 date for retroactive temporal jurisdiction – because this might have put some PA/PLO/Fatah leaders in the path of the ICC due to their activities during the Second Intifada.
Why that date? Because on June 12, 2014, Palestinians kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teens, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah in Gush Etzion, and the "State of Palestine" that the ICC claims to control that area didn't want that event to be subject to ICC prosecution where they might have had to detain and extradite the murderers.
That date itself is proof positive that the entire application to join the ICC was a sham. It is all to add rights to the Palestinian Authority leadership with zero responsibility; to give the impression of respecting international law while subverting its very purpose of treating everyone equally.
There was no justice involved - it was pure politics. There was no downside for the Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas. It should have been recognized as such by the ICC and rejected at the time for its transparently hypocritical nature.
But it wasn't.
And that brings us to today, where an autocratic, corrupt ruler can act like a statesman who cares about justice while celebrating terror attacks and using international law not only to hurt Israel but also to hurt his internal enemy Hamas as well.
