Israeli Regime Taken to ICC for Crimes against Palestinians

Palestinian human rights lawyers have presented a 700-page dossier to the global court, showing how the Israeli regime is responsible for crimes including apartheid.
 
The documents submitted on Wednesday are an attempt to provide evidence for an ongoing preliminary probe opened in 2015 by prosecutors at the global court into crimes committed by the Israeli regime against Palestinians. The so-called preliminary examination aims to establish if there are sufficient grounds for opening a full-scale investigation.
 
Shawan Jabarin, director of Palestinian rights group Al Haq, says that the dossier includes evidence that the Israeli regime forcibly removes Palestinians from the territories and replaces them with Zionist settlers.
 
Lawyers have already submitted a file to the ICC over Israeli war crimes in Gaza, occupied east al-Quds and the occupied West Bank.
 
“Since two years, Palestine is under preliminary examination,” said lawyer Gilles Devers. “In Gaza, we think two years is too long.”
 
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) has formally asked the Hague based ICC to investigate the Israeli regime, which is not a party to the Rome Statute that governs the court, for war crimes committed against Palestinians.
 
It has presented the court with a dossier alleging abuses during the Gaza war in the summer of 2014, and for the Israeli regime's occupation and colonization of Palestinian territories.
 
In January 2015, the tribunal opened a preliminary examination into alleged abuses by all sides in the conflict.
 
An ICC delegation visited Palestinian territories occupied by the Israeli entity in late 2016 but Palestinian activists have complained that the investigation has stalled since then.
 
There is little hope for Palestinians to get justice served by the ICC which is seen as a toll of colonial and hegemonic Western countries used against weaker countries.
 
There have also been persistent but unfruitful calls for Western rulers, including ex-US President George W Bush, his vice-president Dick Cheney and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to also be charged for war crimes at ICC.