Chalk up another international victory for the Palestinians. The International Police Organization, better known as Interpol, has voted to accept Palestine as a full member state.
The move, at Interpol’s annual General Assembly meeting in Beijing, passed in a secret ballot by a vote of 75 to 24, with 34 abstentions.
Interpol membership is a resounding success for the Palestinians. Interpol is the world’s biggest international organization after the United Nations. The Palestinian initiative to join Interpol is also part of an overall strategy to join as many organizations as possible. And entry into Interpol came despite furious Israeli efforts over the last few weeks to thwart it. The US was also actively involved up until the last minute in trying to stop the move. Both could not prevent Palestinian inclusion and were reduced to bystanders in the end.
Israel is adamantly opposed to Palestinian admission to all international organizations, arguing that a state of Palestine does not exist and, therefore, it cannot be accepted as a state in international organizations. That is an argument that most of the world totally disagrees with. In 2011, the Palestinians won full state membership into UNESCO. A year later, the UN General Assembly upgraded the Palestinian Authority’s observer status at the UN to “non-member state” from “entity”. And two years ago, the Palestinians gained membership into the International Criminal Court. The world is allowing the Palestinians access to international bodies because even though Palestine is not yet a fully-fledged state, Palestinians are an active partner in the international community, effectively contributing to advancing common core values like all responsible nations. Palestine, its delegation said, is ready and able to shoulder these obligations and responsibilities.
As for Palestine not being a state, all the world knows who to blame for that.
Interpol membership will bring several benefits to Palestinian police. They’ll get access to information that other police agencies around the world have shared about criminal activity. That’s what makes Israel nervous. It thinks such information will fall into the wrong hands. But Palestine’s membership in Interpol shouldn’t actually pose a new concern for Israel. Much of the world is already in the police organization and many of these countries are not friends of Israel. That means that Iran, for example, already has access to the same kinds of data that Palestine will now have. That didn’t keep Iran from joining Interpol nor has it prevented virtually any other country.
Israel also argues that Palestinian inclusion in Interpol would endanger Israeli military officials and politicians who could face arbitrary international arrest orders. But the procedure does not appear to pose serious legal problems for Israeli government officials and military officers whom pro-Palestinian groups have sought to have arrested and extradited by local authorities as war criminals during overseas visits. Such “red notice” requests in no way binds Interpol and in any event Interpol does not have enforcement capabilities in that regard. A red notice is not an international arrest warrant, and Interpol cannot compel any member country to detain an individual named in one.
What truly irks Israel is that it has lost to the Palestinians on the diplomatic field, and neither Tel Aviv nor Washington could do anything about it. While the US has a degree of leverage on international organizations under the UN umbrellas, it doesn’t have the same sway with international organizations that are independent of the UN. According to US law, Washington must cut funding to UN organizations that accept Palestine as a state. That law does not extend, however, to international groups outside the UN system.
Last year, Israel successfully prevented the Palestinians from joining Interpol. But this year, Palestinians upped their diplomatic efforts to secure membership, bucking Israeli and American pressure by believing in a system based on the global rule of law and due process.
