The International Criminal Court in The Hague is requesting clarification from the Palestinian Authority regarding its recent announcement that all agreements with Israel and the United States had been annulled.
In a May 26 “Order requesting additional information,” a copy of which is available on the ICC website, the court’s pre-trial chamber asked the P.A. to clarify whether its announcement pertained to the Oslo Accords.
The request came on the heels of a speech that P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas delivered in Ramallah on May 19, in which he stated: “The Palestine Liberation Organization and the State of Palestine are absolved, as of today, of all the agreements and understandings with the American and Israeli governments and of all the obligations based on these understandings and agreements, including the security ones.”
Abbas made this declaration in response to Israel’s stated intention to proceed with the part of the Trump administration’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan that allows for the Jewish state to extend sovereignty in some of Judea and Samaria.
The pre-trial chamber is seeking to determine Abbas’s intention in relation to the 1993 Oslo Accords—the PLO treaty with Israel that established the P.A.—in an attempt to assess the status of the war-crimes case against Israel that its chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, threatened earlier this month to pursue.
According to the ICC document, the P.A. has until June 10 to respond. In the event that it meets this request, Bensouda is “ordered” and Israel is “invited” to respond no later than June 24.
The P.A. in 2015 declared its acceptance of the jurisdiction of the ICC over alleged crimes committed by Israel.
Israel does not recognize ICC jurisdiction over the “so-called ‘situation in Palestine.’ ”
