Interpol has voted to admit the Palestinian Authority as a full member in a secret vote of representatives of the international police agency, despite concerns over their attempt to politicize a professional organization, The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday.
“The overwhelming vote in favor of Palestine’s membership is a reflection of the confidence in Palestine’s ability to enforce the law and commit to the organization’s basic values,” PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malik said in a statement published on the official PA news site Wafa.
However, MK Michael Oren warned, “By admitting ‘Palestine,’ which praises terrorists of the past and refuses to condemn those of today, Interpol makes the world less safe.”
This was not the first time that the PA applied for membership in Interpol. In 2016, the global police agency rejected its bid for membership.
The PA’s bid to join Interpol is part of a larger pattern whereby the PA evades direct negotiations and instead hijacks the missions of international organizations to wage diplomatic war against Israel.
For example, after joining the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO in 2011, the Palestinians and their diplomatic allies passed two resolutions that denied the Jewish and Christian historical connections to Jerusalem, despite continued discovery of archaeological evidence that proves the contrary.
The PA has also pursued similar goals at the International Criminal Court, where it seeks “to improperly use international law as a tool to bring about the establishment of a Palestinian state with or without Israel’s consent,” David Daoud assessed in a May 2015 article in The Tower. Additionally, the PA has campaigned to expel Israel from FIFA, the governing body of world soccer.
The decision to accept PA membership in Interpol comes at a time when the PA is under pressure from ex-Palestinian inmates who were illegally imprisoned and tortured for working with Israel to prevent terror attacks, and are now suing the PA in Israeli courts.
Set up almost a century ago, Interpol was designed to help countries share police intelligence and cooperate against crime cross international borders, including terrorism.
[Photo: Massimiliano Mariani / WikiCommons]