Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is playing ‘chicken’ with U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli leaders.

The Arab leader, known to locals by his terrorist name, ‘Abu Mazen,’ signed papers Wednesday for the PA to officially join the International Criminal Court at The Hague. In doing so, Abbas called the bluff issued by Washington and by Israel’s government, a warning that such a step would lead to dire consequences.

The move came one day after a vote at the United Nations Security Council nixed a PA resolution sponsored by Jordan, demanding Israel withdraw its forces from all areas conquered in the 1967 Six Day War. These include much of Jerusalem, areas restored to the capital that were lost when Jordan seized parts of the city during the 1948 War of Independence.

More than half a million Israelis now live and work in the areas of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria demanded by the PA. Sites holy to the three monotheist faiths that were cleaned of the filth and garbage that accumulated during the years of Jordanian occupation are also situated therein.

“There is aggression practiced against our land and our country, and the Security Council has let us down; where shall we go?” Abbas said dramatically in a speech delivered from his headquarters, the Muqata, after signing the Rome Statute – the founding charter of the ICC – and 21 other international treaties and conventions.

“We want to complain to this organization. As long as there is no peace and the world does not prioritize peace in this region, this region will live in constant conflict. The Palestinian cause is the key issue to be settled.”

The fly in the ointment here is the fact that the Rome Statute stipulates once a nation has joined the Court, it then also becomes culpable for the crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide committed by its own government as well. Abbas may well have signed the death warrant for the Palestinian Authority all on his own, without the United States or Israel ever having had to do a single thing.

The giant HarperCollins publishing firm has wiped Israel off the maps in its English-language atlases it sells in the Middle East — because showing its existence would be “unacceptable.”

The maps clearly show Syria, although it is questionable if that country really exists anymore, and Jordan reaching to the Mediterranean Sea, where Israel apparently has disappeared.

HarperCollins explained that  “local preferences” of the Gulf State countries took precedence over including Israel on the map, something their Arab customers found “unacceptable.”

The original textbooks, showing that Israel indeed exists, were discovered by customs officials in an unnamed Gulf country. They allowed the books in the country only after the maps were corrected by hand.

Saudi Arabia suggested in 2002 that the Arab League would “normalize” relations with Israel if it simply would take measures to prepare for the demographic elimination of a Jewish State of Israel by accepting a few million foreign Arabs after surrendering all of the land from which seven Arab countries tried to annihilate the country in 1967.

Of course, doing so would make relieve the Arab countries of having to recognize because the country would be unrecognizable, except under a new name, such as the Palestinian Authority.

The Arab countries never recognized Israel even in 1948, when they tried to destroy Israel before it was day old. Egypt and Jordan since have signed peace treaties, but no other Arab state has dared to follow suit.

It is known that Arab countries uses millions of products made in Israel, from generic medicine made by Teva Pharmaceuticals to computer chips made by Intel’s operations in the country, and even ZIM containers.

Perhaps every single product from Israel should be stamped with an Israeli map and the word “Israel” and we will see if the customs officials will deny their entry.

Visiting Indiana Gov. Mike Pence attended a Christmas dinner hosted by Palestinian Authority  chairman Mahmoud Abbas but snubbed Abbas’ presumptive attempt to talk with the governor at a private meeting.

The Indianapolis Star contradicted reports that Pence, a possible candidate for the GOP nomination as presidential candidate in the 2016 elections, did not attend the dinner with Abbas.

Pence, a devout Christian, is on a nine-day visit to Israel sponsored by the Christians United for Israel group.

Abbas holds an annual Christmas dinner for dignitaries, and Pence attended but then refused an invitation from Abbas for a private meeting after the event.

Pence spokeswoman Kara Brooks told the Indiana newspaper, “The governor is in Israel to strengthen economic ties between Indiana and Israel, to support Israel and to enjoy Christmas with his family. He declined to meet with President Abbas because that was not the purpose of the trip.”

Pence did meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu this week and issued a statement that “our industries are finding their stride in the innovation sectors of life sciences, technology and advanced manufacturing, while our educational institutions share bonds in thought.”

Obviously, Pence did not see much use, politically or economically, in meeting with Abbas.

The issue of whether or not to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount is bound to come up for heated discussion before the elections March 17, but a rarely shown photograph proves that Jews once managed to pray there with a minyan, the minimum of 10 men needed for public prayer.

Jewish Home Knesset Member Uri Ariel and Likud MK Moshe Feiglin have been the most prominent legislators insisting that Israel change the “status quo” and allow Jews to pray at the holy site.

The official status quo, as reported here several weeks ago, has been replaced by a new status quo in which Jews still are not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount but also are restricted in their visits, even without praying.

The police implemented the new and unofficial status quo by limiting the number of Jews at the site and often closing it to Jews for reasons of “security,” meaning they don’t want to deal with Muslim rioters.

The 1995 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan not only does not specifically prohibit prayer by non-Muslims but also leaves it open as a possibility.

Paragraph 3 of the treaty states:

The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.

Regardless, the government policy not long after the Six-Day War in 1967 was to ban Jews form praying there. However, visiting was common.

Amos A., now in his 60s, told The Jewish Press that his father took him to all of the holy sites where Jordan had barred Jews. ”We went to the Patriarchs Cave in Hevron, Rachel’s Tomb at Bethlehem and the Temple Mount. No one said a word.”

He added that he and his father did not pray on the Temple Mount.

At that time, the Chief Rabbinate ruled that it is forbidden for Jews even to visit the Temple Mount, because of all kinds of issues of impurity and prohibitions of any Jew to walk on the ruins over the area where the High Priest entered only once a year, on Yom Kippur.

Very few rabbis were willing to question the opinion of the Rabbinate at the time, but that has changed in recent years. There now is an increasing number of prominent national religious rabbis who permit walking in certain areas of the holy site. Some also permit praying on condition of immersion in a ritual bath beforehand

Around 1980, give or take year, a group of 10 Jewish men, some posing as tourists, formed a minyan and prayed on the Temple Mount, as seen in the photograph above.

Yisrael Medad, a resident of Samaria, a former activist and now a blogger whose writing also appears on The Jewish Press, was one of the 10 men who formed a minyan.

The prayer service took place between 1979 and 1981, as he recalls. The picture shows nine men, with Medad on the far right. The 10th men was the photographer.

“It was one of the very, very few times that Jews have prayed on the Temple Mount,” Medad told The Jewish Press. “The group sneaked in and was able to pray until a Muslim guard was getting very upset and told us to stop. We motioned to him to wait because we were in the middle of the Amidah prayer,” the silent prayer in which interruptions are not allowed.

Medad said the guard “may have simply thought we were just looking around and not praying, but when he realized what was happening, he called the police, who hauled the men away.”

Britain has followed the lead of the United States in rejecting the language of the Jordanian resolution presented to the U.N. Security Council that calls on Israel to sign on the dotted line with the Palestinian Authority within a year and get out of half of Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria within three years.

British U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told reporters Tuesday there are ”difficulties” with the text, but he did not say if Britain would veto the resolution if it musters the needed two-thirds majority to pass.

In the event that the resolution passes, Britain could take the heat off by joining it in a veto, if Washington does so.

So far, the U.S. State Dept. is being cagey, saying it will oppose the resolution without going one step further and vowing to veto it

President Barack Obama would prefer that the resolution not pass, getting him off the hook by not having to exercise a veto.

The Palestinian Authority will have a better chance at winning the two-thirds majority after January 1 when more pro-Arab countries take a rotating slot on the Council, but the British decision could sway others or at least influence them to abstain.

Grant said Tuesday, “There’s some difficulties with the text, particularly language on time scales, new language on refugees. So I think we would have some difficulties.”

The official WAFA Palestinian Authority news agency has honored the murderers with the supreme Islamic status of “Shahids” who were “escorted… to the place of their final rest.”

Palestinian Media Watch translated and published on Tuesday the WAFA report from last Friday  in which it stated in the Arabic language newspaper  Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, “Yesterday [Dec. 25, 2014], the citizens of Jerusalem escorted the bodies of Martyrs (Shahids) Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal, from the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood of south-east Jerusalem, to the place of their final rest in the Al-Sawahreh Al-Sharqiyeh cemetery, after they were held by the occupation for 37 days, and transferred to their relatives after midnight.”

The Facebook page of the Fatah movement, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, posted a picture last Thursday of the graves of the two terrorists and praised them:

    This is the place of eternal rest of Martyrs (Shahids) Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal of Jabel Mukaber [neighborhood] in occupied Jerusalem, who ascended [to heaven] a month and a half ago during an operation (i.e., terror attack) at an occupation synagogue in occupied Jerusalem. Early morning today, they were escorted to their graves at Al-Sawahreh Al- Sharqiyeh.”

Fatah called the terror attack “an operation at an occupation synagogue in occupied Jerusalem.”

Two Arab terrorists from eastern Jerusalem entered a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood of western Jerusalem on November 18 and massacred worshippers with guns, knives and axes, killing four Jews and a Druze police officer, and wounding seven other Jews who were praying.

The terrorists were killed in an exchange of fire with Israeli police that arrived on the scene.

Earlier this month, Palestinian Media Watch reported that the PA Mufti likewise called them Shahids, when he demanded that Israel return the bodies of the killers because “it is the Shahids’ right for us to pray for them, and this is a right according to Shari’ah. Their relatives, friends and loved ones also have the right to see them one last time.”

Palestinian Media Watch also showed that Abbas’ condemnation of the synagogue massacre was later explained away by Fatah officials as a condemnation for diplomatic reasons only.

Soldiers caught two Palestinian Authority rock-throwing terrorists in the act of trying to murder Jews on Monday and killed one and wounded the other after they refused to heed warning shots near the Tapuach junction in northern Samaria.

Elsewhere, soldiers fired warning shots at Gaza terrorists approaching Israel on land and by sea, and terrorists threw firebombs on the secondary highway linking Jerusalem with Tel Aviv via Modi’in. A firebomb attacks last Thursday night has left an 11-year-old Israeli girl in critical condition.

“The forces called them to halt and fired warning shots, and when they didn’t comply they responded to the threat with direct fire which wounded one of the attackers,” an IDF spokeswoman said.

The other terrorist, age 19 according to the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency, was evacuated to a hospital in Shechem with moderate gunshot wounds.

In Gaza, soldiers fired warning shots over the heads of Arabs approaching the separate barriers and at fishing boats veering towards prohibited waters.