Pipeline battle escalates as B.C. Govt...

The B.C. government struck back at Alberta on Tuesday in the Kinder Morgan pipeline dispute, launching legal action challenging the constitutionality of Alberta’s new legislation that allows it to turn off the fuel taps to B.C. Diana Buttu, a former legal adviser to Palestinian negotiators, told Al Jazeera that while “this has been an option for the PA for quite some time, the significance now is that there is enough pressure on PA President Mahmoud Abbas to do something”. The reasons behind the PA’s decision not to make such a move earlier, she explained, were linked to how approximately “one million Palestinians” were on the PA’s payroll, adding that “international donors have also played a role in making it clear that they will not support a PA that is actually defending Palestinian rights”. In retaliation for Palestine’s decision to join the ICC in 2015, Israel withheld millions of dollars in tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the PA. The latter has also routinely been threatened by the US and Israel not to make any moves in the ICC. But while a referral does not automatically trigger an investigation, it applies more pressure on the prosecutor to open one. Commenting on the Palestinian referral to the ICC on Tuesday, the Israeli foreign ministry said the request is “legally invalid”. “The ICC lacks jurisdiction over the Israeli-Palestinian issue, since Israel is not a member of the Court and because the Palestinian Authority is not a state.” Both Palestinian and international rights groups have long called for the ICC to open a formal investigation. Omar Shakir, the Israel-Palestine director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said “without accountability, bloodshed will continue”. Referring to the Israeli army’s killing of 111 Palestinian protesters in the Gaza Strip since March 30, Shakir told Al Jazeera: “The calculated killings of over 100 Palestinians in demonstrations in Gaza highlights the importance of the International Criminal Court prosecutor opening a formal investigation into serious crimes in Palestine.”