OCCUPIED-AL-QUDS: The International Criminal Court’s ruling that it has jurisdiction over the situation in the Palestinian territories opens the way to it investigating alleged war crimes committed in the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza.
The 50-day war, which devastated the coastal enclave and left 2,251 dead on the Palestinian side, mostly civilians, and 74 on the Israeli side, mostly soldiers, has already been the subject of a five-year preliminary ICC probe and a string of critical reports.
In January 2015, ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda launched a preliminary examination into whether there was sufficient evidence to warrant opening war crimes investigations into the conflict. The examination involved both Israeli and Palestinian actions.
That long-running probe looked at the 2014 war and later at violence near the Israel-Gaza border in 2018.
In December 2019, the prosecutor said she wanted to open a full investigation, having been "satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip", without specifying the perpetrators of the alleged crimes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that position made the Hague-based court, which Israel has refused to sign up to since its creation in 2002, a "political tool" against the Jewish state.
Bensouda said she would first ask the ICC to make a jurisdictional ruling on the matter, due to "unique and highly contested legal and factual issues attaching to this situation".
On Friday, the ICC ruled it had jurisdiction over the situation in "territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank".
Netanyahu again slammed the court, calling the ruling "anti-Semitic", while the Palestinians -- who became a state party to the court in 2015 -- hailed it as "victory for justice".
On June 23, 2015, a report by a UN Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict says it received "credible allegations" that both Israeli and Palestinian militants committed war crimes during the war.
The report followed a UN Security Council document published on April 27, 2015, that blamed the Israeli military for seven strikes on UN schools in Gaza that were used as shelters. Forty-four people were killed.
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