Palestine

Page 35 of 37

Filter category

Settlements, Territory, and the ICC

January 3, 2013

The President of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, has threatened to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in order to pursue a case against Israeli settlement construction. At first, this seems an odd choice. One might expect suits over more classic war crimes involving military forces, of the kind dealt with by the Goldstone Commission, to be a be a safer course. Such cases have been repeatedly tried in international and national tribunals, and have a well-established jurisprudence. But the rule against “deporting or transferring” one’s civilian population into occupied territory would be a case of first impression, and thus pose potentially daunting obstacles. The attraction of settlements, however, is that the issue is not bilateral. Israel could not counter-claim, as it were. The talk of taking settlements to the Court is difficult to understand. States refer “situations” to the ICC, not cases. Countries cannot simply engage in strategic claim-splitting, referring the alleged crimes of their enemies and not their own. What is the “situation” here? The scope of the term…

Read more

Palestine, When is Your Birthday?

December 5, 2012

 Col. (Retired) Liron A. Libman, LL.M, is a former Head of the International Law Department of the Israeli Defense Forces. On 29 November, in what some reports described as a historic vote, the UN General Assembly accorded to "Palestine" the status of a "non-member observer state" in the…

Read more

Does General Assembly Resolution 67/19 Have Any Implications for the Legal Status of Palestine?

December 4, 2012

Jure Vidmar is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Law, and Research Fellow at St Johns College, University of Oxford. He has written widely on the process of State creation (see SSRN page here), including: 'Explaining the Legal Effects of Recognition' (2012) International and…

Read more

Palestine as a UN Observer State: Does this Make Palestine a State?

December 3, 2012

Last week, the UN General Assembly voted by 138 to 9 (with 41 abstaining) “to accord to Palestine non-member observer State status in the United Nations”. Thus, Palestine which has been an observer at the UN since 1974 has had its status within the UN upgraded to being an observer State. There has been much euphoria on…

Read more

ICC Assembly of States Parties Urged to Decide on Status of Palestine

September 24, 2012

In April of this year, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court indicated, in an official statement, that he was not competent to decide whether Palestine is a State such that it can accept the jurisdiction of the ICC under Article 12(3) of the ICC Statute. As a result, the ICC Prosecutor took the view that he could not take any action as a…

Read more