Worse for Israel than the Iran deal?

Is Bibi worried about the less immediate problem?

Palestine has joined the International Criminal Court (ICC)

The UN has allowed a purely aspirational state that does not exist and may never exist to join the ICC and thus supposedly make Israeli actions on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip subject to ICC jurisdiction.

Neither the US nor Israel participate in the ICC and neither their nationals nor their territory are, in their own official view, subject to ICC jurisdiction.

This generally infuriates the left but pleases the right.

On the other hand, the American political establishment is not shy about piecemeal surrender of sovereignty to international institutions, anyway.

After more than five years and much diplomatic wrangling, Palestine has joined the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

Now, the prospect of Israel being held accountable for war crimes has greatly increased, and that will have significant repercussions for the peace process and for Palestinian statehood.

ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda opened a preliminary investigation on January 16. 

This can investigate everything that has happened in Palestinian territories since June 13 2014 – the date that Palestine formally accepted ICC jurisdiction. 

This is also the date when Israel broke a ceasefire with Hamas leading to Operation Protective Edge, which raged throughout the summer of 2014, leading to the deaths of at least 1,473 civilians in Gaza and bringing widespread international condemnation against Israeli actions.

The story dates back to 2009, when the Palestinian Authority requested that the ICC investigate Israel over Operation Cast Lead, but was rejected for not being a state. 

It was rejected for full membership in the United Nations in 2011, but was granted the status of non-member observer state the following year.

Palestine then joined numerous international organisations, such as UNESCO, and while the question of its statehood remains controversial, it has now been allowed to join the ICC. 

In the interim it has periodically indicated it would refer Israel to the ICC, but was held back by pressure from the US, the UK and France – and because using the threat suited Palestinian political interests.

Some on the right hold participation in the ICC to be unconstitutional.

It would certainly involve a significant de facto surrender of national sovereignty; it would allow the life, liberty, and property of Americans, for actions within the US or abroad in military service of the US, to rest in the hands of a political authority with no democratic legitimacy and over which the people of the US are not sovereign.

But the the American left are not really fans of the constitution, democracy, or popular sovereignty, anyway, though they are endlessly hypocritical about all three.