ICC Probe Into Gaza War Crimes Haunts Zionist Regime

Date: 24 January 2021 - 21:23

News ID: ۸۶۸۵۱

GAZA STRIP (Dispatches) – With the end of the Trump administration, worries are rising among Zionist regime officials over the possible reopening of an International Criminal Court (ICC) probe into war crimes against the Palestinians, Anadolu reports.
The regime’s KAN channel reported on Sunday that the ICC may feel emboldened to open an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by the occupying regime during the 2014 war on the Gaza Strip.
A decision to open the probe has been suspended since December 2019 to avoid a confrontation with the Trump administration, which imposed sanctions on the ICC in June 2020 over its probe into possible U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan.
"Such an investigation would have broad implications for many high-level Israeli political and military officials, who could be subjected to international arrest warrants issued by members of the tribunal,” the broadcaster said.
In December 2019, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that the court found sufficient evidence to open an investigation into suspicions of war crimes committed by the Zionist regime against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories.
As many as 2,322 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed – and some 11,000 injured – in the 51-day offensive by the regime in 2014.
The U.S. and the Zionist regime have previously claimed that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over the regime and Palestine, that Tel Aviv is being "targeted unfairly” and that Palestine does not qualify as a state.
Palestine was accepted as an ICC member in 2015, three years after signing the court’s founding Rome Statute, based on its "observer state” status at the United Nations.
Both the Zionist regime and the U.S. have refused to sign up to the ICC, which was set up in 2002 to be the only global tribunal trying the world’s worst crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Both have claimed they have credible legal systems that can properly adjudicate human rights violations which make ICC intervention dispensable.