Israel has frozen half a billion shekels – $127 million –  in tax revenues for the Palestinian Authority in retaliation for Mahmoud Abbas’ seeking membership in the International Criminal Court (ICC), where he plans to sue Israel for war crimes.

The United Nations confirmed it has received the documents for joining, but it will take at least 60 days before membership can be approved. In the meantime, Ramallah, already cash-strapped because it pours its welfare payments from the European Union into private pockets, is going to have scramble elsewhere for the money.

The Israeli government decided on Thursday to freeze the funds collected in December but kept silent until the Palestinian Authority actually went through with its threat to try to join the ICC.

Israel previously has frozen transfers of tax revenues it collects for the Palestinian Authority, the last time being last April when Abbas threatened to join the ICC

The U.S. was unhappy with the Israeli move, and U.S. State Dept. Jen Psaki said that the move was “unfortunate” and that “the regular transfer of the Palestinian Authority’s tax revenues and economic cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been beneficial and is important to the well-being of the Palestinian economy.”

This time around, she may button her lip since Abbas has diplomatically spit in the face of her boss by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry by bursting his illusion of the “peace process.”

Kerry has naively bought the hocus-pocus that the Palestinian Authority is interested in a peace treaty with Israel except on Abbas’ terms, or more accurately, the terms of the Arab world.

After the Security Council rejected the resolution, which the United States voted against, the Palestinian Authority moved in rapid-fire pace on the diplomatic front since its failed attempt to have the United Nations Security Council pass a resolution that would require Israel to agree to hand over the fort – half of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria – and then actually do so within three years.

Within two days of the Council’s negative decision, Abbas rushed to the United Nations with documents to join the ICC and more than a dozen other international treaties.

It was a step that Abbas has been planning for a long time during the ‘peace talks” charades ballyhooed by Kerry.

It is unlikely that Israel will surrender this time around and turnover the tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority, which can start begging from the nearly bankrupt European Union or from oil-rich Arab states. Qatar used to give money to Hamas in Gaza but not Ramallah.

Gulf States businessmen have invested in private projects in the Palestinian Authority but not in the government.

There is no way Congress will allow more aid to the Palestinian Authority, and it may even place sanctions on it.

Russia’s economy is in a tailspin.

Who’s left?

Assistance from Tehran would expose even more the farce of the entity known, for the time being, as the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli soldiers Thursday night entered Ramallah and arrested a Jerusalem Arab youth who stabbed two Border Police at the Old City of Jerusalem last week and then fled to the seat of power of the Palestinian Authority.

The IDF found the attacker, Mohammed al-Ajiluni, hiding in a home in Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is supposed to clean out the terrorist infrastructure and show Israel how it is so responsible that Israel can count on its army, called “police” under the Oslo Accords, to protect Israel.

Israel Radio reported Friday morning that the two Border Policemen suffered light wounds in the stabbing attack near the Lions Gate.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas can sign as many treaties as he wants – even the Rome Statute – but the bottom line remains that Ramallah signatures do not a sovereign nation create. Without being a nation, one cannot indict a nation either.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bluntly reminded Abu Mazen – the terrorist name by which Abbas is known in the Arab world – of that reality in remarks following a discussion at the prime minister’s office in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

“We expect the International Criminal Court to reject outright the Palestinian Authority’s hypocritical act because the Palestinian Authority is not a state,” Netanyahu stated. “It is an entity in alliance with a terrorist organization, Hamas, which perpetrates war crimes.

“The State of Israel is a nation of laws with a moral army that upholds international law,” he continued. “We will defend the soldiers of the IDF just as they defend us.”

Netanayhu met with officials on the Palestinian Authority’s accession to 20 international treaties in addition to joining the ICC.

Earlier in the day Abbas filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court at The Hague (ICC) accusing Israel of committing war crimes in “Palestine” at various times since June 13, 2014.

The move came one day after the United Nations Security Council voted to reject a resolution granting statehood to the PA and forcing Israel to withdraw by 2017 from all territories conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas petitioned the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague on Thursday to investigate accusations Israel committed war crimes “committed in Palestine” since June 13, 2014.

The declaration was signed by Abbas on Thursday morning according to a local source who spoke with Haaretz, one day after he signed the Rome Statute, enabling the PA to join the ICC.

Early Thursday morning, officials submitted the Rome Statute document as well as letters of accession signed Wednesday by Abbas entering the PA into 20 additional international treaties, according to the WAFA news agency.

The flurry of signatures followed Tuesday’s rejection by the United Nations Security Council of a resolution calling for recognition of the PA as a sovereign state and the withdrawal of Israel by 2017 from all post-1967 territories.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned Wednesday in a brief statement that Abbas would cause more harm than good for his own people, should he attempt a criminal indictment of Israel at the ICC.

Past similar attempts have all failed because neither party was a member of the Court, which has no jurisdiction over nations who are not a signatories to the Rome Statute.

While Abbas signed the Rome Statute on behalf of the PA unity government, Israel has not joined the Court – and thus the ICC still legally has no jurisdiction over the Jewish State.

Whether in fact the Court now has jurisdiction over any geographic area conquered by Israel in 1967 – including the territory of the Palestinian Authority — is a murky question that will undoubtedly be debated among international attorneys for some time.

Some of those areas — such as the Golan Heights and the parts of Jerusalem restored to Israel’s capital during the war — have been formally annexed by the State of Israel. Members of the international community do not recognize this status, however.

If the signature by Abbas validates the jurisdiction of the Court over PA territory – which includes parts of Judea and Samaria as well as all of Gaza – it raises another question.

Perhaps a member nation – Canada, the United States or any other who has lost a citizen to PA Arab terrorism – may launch a counter-suit.

What then might be the result of a petition to the Court to investigate “Palestine’s” record on war crimes and crimes against humanity instead?

Israeli soldiers arrested two terrorists in Jenin overnight and confiscated a cache of weapons, including, two rifles, a revolver, grenades, bullets and bullet cartridges.

Elsewhere, the IDF arrested eight other suspected terrorists.

Jenin, like other cities, is under control by the Palestinian Authority, which is committed by the Oslo Accords, to weed out terrorists.

The problem is that the Oslo Accords exists on paper buried in the overflowing trash pile of the U.S. State Dept. which still talks about the “peace process” that PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas decimated this week by asking the U.N. Security Council to scrap the last remnants of the Oslo Accords and removing all possibility of negotiations with Israel by voting on a resolution to unilaterally define the borders of Israel.

The resolution failed, the terrorists run free in Judea and Samaria and the IDF keeps Israel – and Abbas – safe from terrorists.

A day after the Palestinians failed to gain the support of the UN Security Council to set a date for Israeli withdrawal and Palestinian Statehood, the Palestinian Authority is pursuing another path to gain recognition as a state without negotiating with the Jewish state by seeking to make itself a party to the International Criminal Court.

“Once again President Abbas has signaled the world that he refuses to do any of the heavy lifting of a true peace builder,” said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Dean and Founder and Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human Rights NGO. “Court Israel, not the ICC to get a Palestinian State,” they added.

“Further, Mr. Abbas and his cronies, in the Palestinian Authority as well as Hamas and its leadership are in for a surprise,” the Rabbis said, adding, “While they pursue phony charges of war crimes against Israel, they themselves will have to wait behind a long line of thousands of bereaved families whose lives were destroyed by Palestinian terrorists as well as face charges of incitement to genocide.”

“The Wiesenthal Center urges the appropriate U.S. Committees in the Senate and House to convene hearings as soon as possible to discuss the impact on U.S. funding of the PA in light of Abbas’ move,” Hier and Cooper concluded.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).

The U.S. issued a strongly-worded response Wednesday to the move by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to sign the Rome Statute joining the International Criminal Court at The Hague and 21 other international treaties.

Jeff Rathke, director of the Office of Press Relations at the U.S. State Department, said in a statement the actions taken Wednesday by the Palestinian Authority and Abbas were “counter-productive.”

In fact, Abbas directly defied the endless requests, recommendations and “advice” by U.S. envoys — including Secretary of State John Kerry — not to carry out such an action. It followed by one day the United Nations Security Council vote to nix the PA’s draft resolution submitted by Jordan demanding Israel withdraw its forces by 2017 from all territories conquered in the 1967 Six Day War.

Wednesday’s signature by Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah means the Palestinian Authority may have the right to initiate international criminal lawsuits and investigations in the Court — against those who are also members. However, the entity will also be subject to the same scrutiny and will be held to the same human rights standards as well.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement, “We are deeply troubled by today’s Palestinian action regarding the ICC. It is an escalatory step that will not achieve any of the outcomes most Palestinians have long hoped to see for their people.”