The Palestinian foreign minister has called on the international criminal court to immediately open an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, and apartheid.

Riyad al-Maliki met the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, at the tribunal on Tuesday in The Hague and referred the case, calling it an “important and historic step towards justice for the Palestinian people who continue to suffer ongoing, widespread and systematic crimes”.

He said the move was “due to the intensity and the rate and the severity of the crimes against our people” including the targeting of “unarmed protestors in the Gaza Strip”.

Israel is not a signatory to the ICC, and its foreign ministry said the country took “a severe view” of what it called an absurd and politicised referral, which it described as a cynical step.

“[T]he ICC lacks jurisdiction over the Israeli-Palestinian issue, since Israel is not a member of the court and because the Palestinian Authority is not a state,” it said in a statement.

Palestine gained UN observer state status five years ago and later joined the ICC, which has jurisdiction to prosecute individuals. While Israel has not signed the Rome statute that established the court, if Israeli citizens commit international crimes they may fall under the tribunal’s authority.

The Palestinian Authority has used international law to fight the occupation. Last month, diplomats in Geneva filed a complaint against Israel under a UN anti-racism treaty, triggering what may be a lengthy investigation.

In a statement on the ICC referral, the Palestinian foreign ministry said Israel’s settlement regime was “the single most dangerous threat to Palestinian lives, livelihoods, and national rights”.

“Israel maintains, expands, and protects the settlement regime by committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people,” it said.

The ICC had already launched a preliminary examination into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel and the Palestinian territories in 2015. The probe included crimes allegedly committed by both sides in the 2014 Gaza conflict between Israel and Hamas. However, the court has not opened a full-blown investigation that could ultimately lead to indictments.

More recently, weeks of bloodshed on the Gaza frontier, in which medics say Israeli soldiers have killed more than 110 Palestinians and shot thousands more, have sparked fury during an increasingly tense period.

Peace negotiations have been frozen for years while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has rejected Washington’s traditional role as a mediator after Donald Trump declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

Israeli soldiers killed more than 60 Palestinians on 14 May in Gaza, the enclave’s health ministry said, during protests focused on the US embassy move from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city. Israel has accused Gaza’s rulers, Hamas, of exploiting protesting civilians and using them as human shields to carry out attacks.



Bensouda said in April: “Violence against civilians – in a situation such as the one prevailing in Gaza – could constitute crimes ... as could the use of civilian presence for the purpose of shielding military activities.”

The ICC considers itself a court of last resort, authorised to take on cases when authorities are unable or unwilling to launch prosecutions.

