Will PA focus on settlements at ICC?
Now that the Palestinian Authority is an official member of the International Criminal Court, the safer course for the Palestinian leadership will be to pursue Israel's settlements and not its transgressions in Gaza.
No one is saying it out loud, but it appears that the Palestinian leadership is choosing to pursue the settlement track rather than the Gaza track in the war crimes efforts against Israel. Palestinians have publicly talked about pursuing in the International Criminal Court (ICC) war crime cases against Israel for the deaths and destruction in Gaza during last summer’s war and for the ongoing illegal settlement activities in the occupied territories.
Palestine became an official member of the ICC on April 1. And while Palestinian spokespersons are talking about both tracks, they are sending signals that they will not push hard when it comes to Gaza issues.
It appears that the ICC’s prosecutor had already begun examining the Gaza war for possible war crimes back in January, but it appears that this case will take a long time. "There's no time line, some of the preliminary examinations at the court have been going on for four years," Richard Dickers, the director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program, told Vice News. "What's underway is only the first phase of the judicial process."
The ICC is considered a court of last resort. Its official website states that it “will not act if a case is investigated or prosecuted by a national judicial system unless the national proceedings are not genuine.”
