Chantal Meloni, an Italian criminal lawyer and professor of International Criminal Law at the University of Milan, described Friday’s ruling by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Palestine as one of “the most critical rulings that the ICC has issued in the past years,” speaking from her Berlin office on Sunday.
She said:
the ruling of Friday was of the utmost importance it was really i would say one of the most critical ruling that the icc has issued in the past years the question was just to decide whether the international criminal court as a criminal tribunal so an institution that has its own jurisdiction could consider palestine as a state and therefore has have jurisdiction over the alleged crimes committed on its territory
and here the court on friday confirmed that yes this is the case as one of the most fundamental human rights recognized under human rights customary law the palestinian people are entitled to self-determination and the court gives finally a good attention a careful attention to this right
but there is another crucial passage in the decision it’s only a few lines on the relationship between a political and the legal issue brought before the icc and here they just the the the judges acknowledge the fact that there is a political aspect of the palestinian israeli situation f course there is and many participants including states have argued before the court that because of this political side of the issue the court shouldn’t have stepped in and should have not adjudicated the the issue
the judges in my opinion rightly say of course there is a political aspect of this situation as every situation where there is a commission of the so-called court crimes war crimes crimes against humanity genocide they always a state apparatus
nevertheless
and this is the important bit the judges say there is a legal aspect always about this situation and this is what they will deal with at the international criminal court they will not resolve the controversy about the territory of palestine and the the israeli-palestine situation as a wall they will tackle individual criminal responsibilities for the commission of crimes grave crimes like war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the Palestinian territory
from the palestinian perspective these step that with this phase we are in now
is already a huge success and some years ago it was not even thinkable that this could happen it has first of all an impact on individual individual people on human beings so those who took decisions at the highest levels in the government in the military chain of command those who executed the orders more broadly it has an impact on the state as such uh because it questions the legitimacy of a number of policies and decisions that have been made at the state level so this is why of course israel is so worried about the opening of the investigation before the icc and has done everything i would say really everything in its power to make it impossible
what we need to remember it’s that behind a political situation there are real people and here there are of course millions of Palestinians which have been subjected to a military occupation for decades and we have allegations of very serious crimes committed against civilians in particular Palestinian civilians but as i said there are allegations also of crimes committed by palestinian actors where Israeli potentially have been victimized and there is a need to break this circle of impunity