The Palestinian Authority's “foreign ministry” is calling on the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, to give priority to cases filed by the "state of Palestine" in respect to which a decision has already been made to begin an investigation, especially regarding the "forced displacement" of Arab residents in the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan neighborhoods of Jerusalem.
A statement issued by the PA “ministry” on Sunday called on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to immediately activate and implement the "international defense system for the Palestinian people."
The PA “foreign ministry” condemned the "occupation" and its patterns of action, which, it claims, are intended to put pressure on Palestinian Arab residents to "forcibly evict them from their homes to replace them with settlers and their extremist terrorist organizations."
According to the PA bureau, the international community's silence due to the claim that the new Israeli government should be granted time simply encouraged "the occupation authorities to carry out their colonial expansion projects and escalate the oppression and abuse of our (Palestinian) people."
It blamed the "occupation government" for the direct demolition of homes and the forced displacement of Palestinian Arab residents of Jerusalem, which it defined as a crime of ethnic cleansing.
The PA officially joined the ICC on April 1, 2015, and immediately filed a series of legal complaints with the court. In addition to claiming that Israel committed war crimes during the 2014 Gaza war, it also claimed that Israeli “settlements” are “an ongoing war crime”.
In May, the PA also filed a complaint with the ICC over what it called "forced eviction of Arab families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem."
The PA has had standing at the court since the UN General Assembly recognized the "state of Palestine" as a non-member observer in 2012.