John Bolton
John BoltonNoam Revkin Fenton/Flash 90

Former US National Security Adviser John Bolton on Saturday denounced the International Criminal Court chief prosecutor’s decision to open a full investigation into alleged Israeli “war crimes” in Palestinian Authority (PA)-controlled territories.

“The decision of the International Criminal Court's Prosecutor to investigate Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank proves yet again that the ICC is lawless and unaccountable. U.S. sovereignty is at stake here as well as Israel's,” tweeted Bolton.

“We must reject any ICC effort to assert jurisdiction over states like Israel and the United States or their citizens. There can be no compromise and no surrender on this point,” he added.

The ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said on Friday she is “satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with an investigation into the situation in Palestine” and urged judges to rule on the court's jurisdiction "without undue delay".

The prosecutor added however that she did not require any authorization from judges to open a probe as there had been a referral from the Palestinian Authority, which joined the court in 2015 and has since filed a series of legal complaints with it against Israel.

Bensouda’s announcement came hours after Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said that the ICC has no jurisdiction to rule on matters in Israel – which is not a party to the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court – because the Palestinian Authority is not a state, and that it has been long established that the final status of the territories under dispute must be settled by negotiations, not criminal proceedings.