The Arab League on Wednesday welcomed last week’s International Criminal Court (ICC) ruling stating that “Palestine” is a state and the ICC has jurisdiction involving its cases.
In a statement quoted by the Xinhua news agency, the Arab League said the ICC report is "significant" because it meant the ICC has geographic jurisdiction over Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
The pan-Arab body accused Israeli forces of continuing to “annex more Palestinian occupied lands” as the world is busy with fighting the novel coronavirus.
The ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced last week that the preliminary examination into the situation in “Palestine” found “that all the statutory criteria under the Rome Statute for the opening of an investigation have been met."
Bensouda announced this past December that she intends to open a full investigation into alleged Israeli “war crimes”, but before opening a full probe, asked the ICC to rule on the territory over which it has jurisdiction because of the "unique and highly contested legal and factual issues attaching to this situation."
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 PA, which joined the court in 2015 and has since filed a series of legal complaints with it against Israel.
Bensouda’s announcement was criticized in Israel and also by countries such as Australia and Hungary. Germany, meanwhile, backed Israel's argument that the court's jurisdiction does not extend to Palestinian Authority-assigned areas, as “Palestine” is not a state that fulfills all the criteria under general international law.
Before the ICC said it would delay the debate on the jurisdiction, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called for sanctions against the ICC, saying its investigation into Israel’s actions against Hamas in 2014 was a “full frontal attack” on democracies’ rights to self-defense.