Palestine joins ICC, looks to target Israel

Gazans hope ICC will make ‘ Israel pay’ for alleged war crimes in 2014

Gaza City, April 1: Holding Israel accountable. This is what Yasser al- Qassas and thousands of Gazans hope to see with the Palestinian accession to the International Criminal Court which was marked at a closed- door ceremony in the Hague, exactly 90 days after Palestine joined the court’s founding Rome Statute.

Palestinians joined the ICC with the goal of try- ing Israeli leaders for alleged war crimes in the fighting in and around the Gaza Strip in summer 2014, and alleged crimes relating to the occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Mr Qassas is one of the many Palestinians who lost family members during the July- August war, waged by Israel to end rocket attacks at its territory and destroy attack tunnels from Gaza.

Approximately 2,200 Palestinians were killed, of them 1,500 civilians, according to a recent United Nations report. On the Israeli side 73 people were killed, of them 67 soldiers. A July 21 airstrike on a five- storey building west of Gaza City demolished Mr Qassas’s home, the unemployed 40- yearold recalled. “Israel killed my pregnant wife and four of my daughters, in addition to five other family members, and it should pay for this at the ICC,” he said. The Palestinians have formed a committee to oversee cases to lodge with the ICC as part of a “national effort” to end Israeli “impunity”, including a Gaza committee and another for settlements. Chief negotiator Saeb Erakat will oversee the mechanism, which includes various figures from the Palestinian political scene.