Palestinians Demand ICC Probe Of Israel Killings On Gaza Border
Image by Getty Images
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki asked prosecutors at the International Criminal Court on Tuesday to launch a full investigation into accusations of Israeli human rights abuses on Palestinian territory, saying the evidence was “insurmountable.”
Maliki submitted a so-called “referral” giving the prosecutor at the Hague-based court the legal basis to move beyond a preliminary inquiry started in January 2015.
The International Criminal Court has the authority to hear cases of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the 123 countries that have signed up to it. Israel has not joined the court, but because the Palestinians have, Israelis could be targeted for crimes committed on Palestinian lands.
Israel rejected Tuesday’s move as “legally invalid,” saying the court lacks jurisdiction because the Palestinian Authority is not a state and Israel abides by international law.
The court’s prosecutors launched an initial investigation into allegations against Israel when the Palestinians first joined the court in 2015. Tuesday’s referral allows that investigation to proceed to the next stage of a full investigation, without waiting for a judge to give approval.
Harvard legal expert Alex Whiting, a former ICC prosecutor, said on Twitter that the referral “has a real effect. ..it is much harder for the office of the prosecutor to stay in the preliminary investigation phase for years.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
