"[Israeli p]oliticians on the Right have been regularly underplaying the threat of the International Criminal Court...
The question is whether passing the Settlements Bill would change an ICC full criminal war crimes investigation into the settlement enterprise from a neutral or remote possibility to a much higher likelihood.
If the ICC went after the settlement enterprise for war crimes, Israeli defense ministers, housing ministers, local settlement councils and possibly others could be on the hook...
If the bill does not pass ... top Israeli lawyers believe they have a strong shot to convince the ICC to back-off on the settlement issue. Their defenses include that settlements have never been prosecuted before as war crimes, prosecuting could open a can of worms for many other countries, unresolvable jurisdiction issues and Israeli Supreme Court rulings.
In contrast, if the bill passes, many of these defenses and the general benefit of the doubt on this new issue of interpretation, could go out the window, as Israel could be seen as practically daring the ICC not to act in the face of what most of the world, rightly or wrongly, sees as a land-grab...
They could gamble that as long as they wait until Trump becomes president, that passing the law at that point would matter less diplomatically, and that legally they can count on the Israeli Supreme Court to strike it down (which it very likely would) – eliminating any legal damage.
In other words, the ICC could not go after Israel for a law which was struck down by the Israeli Supreme Court before it goes into effect. In fact, the court striking down the law would affirm the court's independence..."