Palestinians join International Criminal Court

… from Press TV,  Tehran

[ Editor’s Note:  My, my…this certainly came as a big surprise today. This news follows the non-UN sanctioned intervention into Yemen by the Saudis and their fellow travelers, the formal creation of an Arab League-Zionist-US  new mayhem participant…the new Arab NATO with Egypt’s Sisi at the helm, and the White house quickly releasing $1.3 billion in frozen Egyptian military aid.

Gosh, I wonder if any of this might be connected or orchestrated. Does it have anything to do with the reducing of Iran tensions about to go off the top ten list of “threats”, where a replacement was needed to keep the world tension meters active?

The last thing I expected to see today was the Palestinians becoming the newest member of the ICC when no less than Speaker of the House John Boehner in Tel Aviv meeting with his handler, Bibi Netanyahu. You just can’t make this stuff up.

I would assume that the Palestinian Authority’s Abbas and his legal team have some initial charges ready to file, or they might just give the court a whole filing cabinet full of them. Israel’s response will probably be to do the usual smirk routine and laugh about how they are not under ICC jurisdiction, or anyone else’s for that matter, including their puppets on a string in the US Congress.

I apologize in advance if this is an April Fools joke by Press TV, but that is not their style. But then again…there is always the first time… Jim W. Dean ]

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–  First published  …  April 01,  2015  –

Palestinians have formally become a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a membership that enables Palestinians to sue Israeli officials for war crimes.

The Palestinian Authority officially joined the ICC on Wednesday, becoming the 123rd member of the Hague-based court.

The membership enables the Palestinians to file lawsuits against Israeli officials over crimes committed on Palestinian territory, including offenses committed during Tel Aviv’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip last year.

The Palestinian decision to join the ICC was made in January after decades of negotiations with Israel failed to put an end to Tel Aviv’s policy of expanding settlements on the occupied Palestinian lands.

In response to the decision, Tel Aviv cut off more than USD 120 millions in tax funds to the Palestinian Authority.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) submitted a detailed report to the ICC slamming Israel for war crimes and crimes against humanity during its devastating military onslaught on Gaza last summer.

The Paris-based nongovernmental rights body, which was the first organization that gained access to the Gaza Strip following a ceasefire in August last year, pointed in the report to the examples of indiscriminate and direct attacks against civilians and civilian objects, the disproportionate use of force as well as deliberate attacks targeting medical services during the Israeli war on Gaza, which was codenamed by the Israeli regime as “Operation Protective Edge.”

The rights body’s report also presented testimonies collected from the victims of the 50-day Israeli war on the coastal enclave.

Furthermore, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat announced on March 30 that the ICC started investigating war crimes committed by Israel during the war on Gaza.

Israel started its latest war on the Gaza Strip in early July last year. The offensive ended on August 26, 2014, with a truce that took effect after indirect negotiations in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in Israel’s 50-day onslaught. Over 11,100 others – including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people – were also injured.

Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022.  He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.

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