Some $400 million in annual USA economic aid to the Palestinian Authority could also be jeopardized by the inquiry.
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“Palestine has chose to seek justice, not vengeance”, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki said outside the Hague.
“Palestine is a test for the credibility of worldwide mechanisms”, he told reporters.
Emmanuel Nahshon, Israel’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman: “We view the Palestinian initiative at the ICC as nothing more than a provocation”.
All the same, Palestinian officials exploited a loophole in the ICC rules to initiate a “preliminary inquiry” against Israel within their first months of joining the ICC.
One year later, the second flotilla, Stay Human, also failed to carry out its mission, Press TV reported.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday he believed “a flotilla will not help to address the dire situation in Gaza”, but reiterated his call on Israel to “lift all closures, with due consideration of Israel’s legitimate security concerns”. The ICC does not prosecute countries or leaders who are sanctioned by their own legal systems. It blamed Hamas for civilian deaths, saying the group employed “human shields”, and stored weapons and fired rockets near hospitals, mosques, schools and churches.
Israel is not a member and rejects the court’s authority. But a boycott of prosecutors could put Israel in awkward company.
The ICC was set up in 2002 to investigate and try those responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, where national authorities cannot or will not prosecute. “We wanted to have an exclusive report made for the ICC”.
Lowey said Congress crafted the law to prevent USA tax dollars from rewarding “purposely provocative, unilateral steps” that threaten peace negotiations.
“Finally, we are aboard the Swedish freedom boat the Marianne, and we are on our way to Gaza“, Arab Israeli lawmaker Basel Ghattas announced on his Facebook page before the flotilla left the coast of Crete.
The White House said Thursday that efforts to have Israel charged with war crimes at the global Criminal Court were “counterproductive” and would be opposed by Washington. Additionally, Israel transfers Palestinians from the occupied territory to a number of prisons inside Israel in what the Palestinian brief argues is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Talks on a Palestinian state in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war collapsed past year and there is no prospect of reviving them.
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This story has been edited from the source material.
