CIAO DATE: 02/2015
January 2015
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
On December 30, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas signed twenty different international conventions, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The name of the statute refers to the 1998 conference that established the treaty-based court, which began operations in 2002. In principle, the PA's move enables the ICC to assert jurisdiction over future developments in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and empowers any signatory to the Rome Statute -- currently including 160 countries -- to claim that Israel should be brought to the court on charges of war crimes. Palestinian officials have said that they want the ICC to investigate Israel's settlement policies. Once any such inquiries were concluded, it would be up to the ICC's chief prosecutor, Gambian lawyer Fatou Bensouda, whether to move forward with actual cases against Israeli officials. Abbas's move comes on the heels of his failure last week to garner the votes needed for the UN Security Council to approve Palestinian statehood. Although that failure averted a potentially controversial U.S. veto, the ICC move raises other thorny problems.
Resource link: The Palestinians Go to the ICC: Policy Implications [PDF] - 63K