Ahead of ruling on war crimes probe, ICC asks PA if Oslo Accords still in force
Abbas claimed Netanyahu’s remarks the day before about the planned extension of Israeli sovereignty over settlements and the Jordan Valley meant Israel had “annulled” the Oslo Accords, which established the PA and kicked off the decades-long peace process, “and all agreements signed with it.”
On April 30, ICC prosecutor Bensouda reiterated her position that Palestine is a state for the purposes of transferring criminal jurisdiction over its territory to The Hague.
It is now up to a pretrial chamber to rule on the matter. The three judges of that chamber — Péter Kovács of Hungary, Marc Perrin de Brichambaut of France and Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou of Benin — have no set deadline to hand down their decision but are expected to do so within 90 days.
On Tuesday, the pretrial chamber surprisingly issued a document saying that Abbas’s comments about no longer being bound by agreements with Israel came to its attention, and it “requests Palestine to provide additional information on this statement, including on the question whether it pertains to any of the Oslo agreements between Palestine and Israel.”
The chamber also “invite[d] Israel to respond to any additional information” Ramallah may provide by June 24.
But Jerusalem, which has long argued that Palestine is not a sovereign state and therefore cannot transfer criminal jurisdiction over its territory to the Hague, is unlikely to accept the judges’ offer, lest any formal engagement with the court be seen as legitimizing it.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denounced the ICC and declared thwarting a possible war crimes probe one of the new government’s top priorities.
The Oslo Accords were signed in Washington in 1993. A follow-up agreement two years later, sometimes called Oslo II, set out the scope of Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and Gaza. The interim pact was only supposed to last five years while a permanent agreement was finalized but it has tacitly been rolled over for more than two decades.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Daphne Anson: The Legal Status of the Territories Beyond the Green Line (video)
Avi Bell is an Israeli Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law and at Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum.
From that estimable organisation UK Lawyers for Israel comes this video, not quite one hour long, of the professor in conversation with Oxford-educated London barrister Natasha Hausdorf, who has a LLM from Tel Aviv University in the areas of international law and the law of armed conflict.
Using illustrative matter to explain his points, Professor Bell enlightens us on the topic "Israel, Territory and International Law".
UAE virus aid rejected by Palestinians still at Israel’s airport; UN rethinking
Fourteen tons of medical supplies earmarked for the Palestinians to help cope with the coronavirus pandemic were still sitting at Ben Gurion Airport on Tuesday evening, a week after they arrived from the UAE, as UN officials worked to find a way to distribute the aid after the Palestinian Authority announced it would not accept it.
The aid arrived on what was the first-ever direct flight from the United Arab Emirates to Israel last Tuesday. The landing was celebrated by the Foreign Ministry, which notified reporters in advance about the historic route by which the supplies would be arriving.
However, the PA has insisted the UAE did not coordinate the matter and that it therefore could not accept the aid, which was seen as a step normalizing ties between Israel and the Gulf states.
The supplies — which include ten ventilators, PPE (personal protective equipment), lithium batteries for charging relevant hospital equipment and cleaning materials — were clearing customs at Ben Gurion and are slated to be transferred to a holding facility in Ashdod, a UN official told The Times of Israel on Tuesday evening.
The official did not tie the week-long stall to the PA’s announced rejection of the supplies. He said the UAE cargo flight was not the only one to have arrived at Ben Gurion, and that clearing customs and security checks takes time.