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by Our Foreign Desk
PALESTINIAN Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki delivered evidence of Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague yesterday.
The files relate to preliminary investigations by ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda into alleged war crimes in Gaza last year and illegal settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Gambian lawyer Ms Bensouda will decide whether there is evidence to merit a full-scale investigation.Palestine said its information included “statistics on settlements, prisoners, as well as statistics on Israel’s aggression and attack on Gaza.
“The absence of accountability has led to the recurrence of violations and crimes and will continue to do so if gone unchecked,” it said, and added that the dossier documented evidence of “war crimes and crimes committed by individuals of the Israeli leadership.”
A report by the UN’s human-rights council on Monday accused both Israel and Palestine of committing war crimes last summer. This is also being studied by the ICC.
But Israel, like the US, Sudan and many other countries, is not a member of the ICC and does not recognise its authority.
“This is a Palestinian attempt to manipulate and politicise the judicial mechanisms of the ICC,” said Israeli spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon. “We hope that the prosecutor will not fall in that trap.”
The ICC’s ability to hold war criminals to account has been called into doubt after its recent failure to fulfil an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir as he visited the African Union summit in South Africa earlier this month.
Human rights group the Southern African Litigation Centre persuaded a judge to order the government to arrest Mr Bashir.
But this overrode the diplomatic immunity customarily extended to foreign dignitaries and Mr Bashir left the country before the argument could be settled.
South Africa’s cabinet said yesterday that it was reviewing its membership of the ICC, citing “contradictions” in the Rome Statute that led to its founding.But a statement said that South Africa would only withdraw from the ICC as a last resort.
