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The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization.
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Still Hopeful
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Every Dollar Counts and Your Support Makes All the Difference
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FEATURE ARTICLE
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Palestine and the ICC
Fatou Bensouda, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. (Photo: Wiki Commons)
By John V. Whitbeck
An article published on April 4 by the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has reported that "President Mahmoud Abbas is to suspend all unilateral measures vis-�-vis the United Nations agencies to give U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry time to jump-start a new round of Israeli-Palestinian talks" and that "the Palestinians have also decided to put off applying to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to sign the Rome Statute and thus obtain standing in the court as a state."
Particularly after last month's stunning public demonstration of President Barack Obama's lack of respect for Palestine and the Palestinian people - characterized by Uri Avnery, Israel's most venerable and distinguished peace activist, as "spitting in the face of the entire Palestinian people" - this report, if accurate, is profoundly disheartening.
During a public discussion held at the Acad�mie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris on March 20, Fatou Bensouda, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, addressed the potential membership of Palestine in the ICC.
During the question time, she was asked the following question: "If and when the State of Palestine, whose state status has now been overwhelmingly confirmed by the UN General Assembly, revives its application for ICC membership, what will be the procedure for considering its application and, if it is approved, would the court's jurisdiction be retroactive to 2002, permitting prosecutions for crimes already committed in Palestine or by Palestinians?"
She started her reply by recalling why Palestine's initial application was not approved - essentially, as was clear from the ICC's response, the court's view that it was not the role of the court, but rather the role of the UN General Assembly, to determine who was or was not a state. She then went on to say that, now that the UN General Assembly had made its determination that Palestine is a state, "the ball is now in the court of Palestine", "Palestine has to come back" and "we are waiting for them".
While she said, unsurprisingly, that any new application would have to be considered, there was no ambiguity or suspense as to the result of the requisite consideration. It was clear that, in her eyes, ICC membership for the State of Palestine was Palestine's for the asking. There was even a hint of puzzlement that the ICC had not heard from Palestine subsequent to the UN vote.
On the issue of retroactivity, she said that she did not think that any retroactivity could extend back to the birth of the court in 2002 - at most, if prior to Palestine's formal accession to the Rome Statute, to November 29, 2012, when the UN General Assembly determined the issue of Palestine's state status.
Her response on the retroactivity issue, while contrary to widespread Palestinian expectations, could actually be good news for Palestine, since it should minimize (if not totally eliminate) the "threat" of Israeli accountability perceived, principally in Western eyes, as being posed by Palestine's membership in the ICC.
If the ICC would have jurisdiction only over FUTURE war crimes - which should, at least to some degree, discourage the commission of NEW war crimes - who (other than Israel) could argue against Palestinian membership with a straight face? Even the U.S. and U.K. governments should then find it embarrassing to oppose Palestinian membership, since doing so would, effectively, require arguing that Israel should be free to commit NEW war crimes without any concern as to potential accountability. (In any event, lacking vetoes in this instance, they could not prevent Palestinian membership.)
Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that possession of ICC membership does not necessarily entail seeking prosecutions any more than possession of nuclear weapons necessarily entails using them. In both cases, the primary motivation and virtue of club membership is deterrence.
If the Ha'aretz report is accurate, friends of Palestine may legitimately start to wonder why the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah bothered to go to the UN General Assembly on November 29 if it did not intend to follow up and build on its triumph in any useful way - most obviously by seeking to balance its huge disadvantages in the realms of power politics and brute force with its huge advantages under international law - and if it remains content to leave the fate of the Palestinian people and cause in the far from benevolent hands of the U.S. government.
- John V. Whitbeck is an international lawyer who has advised the Palestinian negotiating team in negotiations with Israel. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.
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SELECTED ARTICLES
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By Ira Glunts Various news sources report that the Obama administration has notified the Palestinian Authority that the new U.S. approach to peace negotiations will be based on the Arab Peace Initiative (API) of 2002. The plan, which was unanimously adopted by the Arab League, is sometimes referred to as the Saudi Peace Initiative since [...]
(This week writer Iain Banks announced he has cancer and may have just months to live. Here he explains why, in 2010, he decided his novels would no longer be published in Israel.) By Iain M Banks I support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because, especially in our instantly connected world, an injustice [...]
Palestinian unions representing lecturers, university employees, teachers and writers have praised the Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) for its endorsement of an academic boycott of Israel. In a letter saluting the TUI, the Palestinians said the clarity of the union's statement was "unprecedented". They also highlighted the importance of such solidarity actions, invoking Irish support [...]
Apr 8 2013 | Posted in Articles, Features | Read More �
By June Rugh I highly recommend the new collection of essays, Generation Palestine: Voices from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, ed. Rich Wiles, Pluto Press, London, 2013. With an impressive range of contributors-Palestinian author and journalist Ramzy Baroud, Israeli economist Shir Hever, UN Special Rapporteur Professor Richard Falk, Irish journalist/activist Eamonn McCann, Greek Orthodox [...]
Apr 8 2013 | Posted in Articles, Reviews | Read More �
By John V. Whitbeck An article published on April 4 by the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz has reported that "President Mahmoud Abbas is to suspend all unilateral measures vis-�-vis the United Nations agencies to give U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry time to jump-start a new round of Israeli-Palestinian talks" and that "the Palestinians have [...]
By Uri Avnery Obama in Israel: Every word right. Every gesture genuine. Every detail in its place. Perfect. Obama in Palestine: Every word wrong. Every gesture inappropriate. Every single detail misplaced. Perfect. It started from the first moment. The President of the United States came to Ramallah. He visited the Mukata'a, the "compound" which serves [...]
By George Katsiaficas The current threat of a major war in Korea is akin to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when the US and the USSR nearly waged nuclear war. Peaceful coexistence was assured only after an agreement was reached for Russia to withdraw its missiles from Cuba and for the US to pull [...]
By Manash Bhattacharjee Commandant Guevara Man more than memory memory more than man. A scar without a wound in the masks of history. He was no engineer of lies. He was no head in the line of chairs, statues, betrayals. O' how he would have roared before bullets meant for the guts. How his smile [...]
Apr 5 2013 | Posted in Poetry | Read More �
By Felicity Arbuthnot Last night and overnight, two unarmed teenagers, cousins Amer Nassar (17) and Naji Abdul-Karim Balbeisi (18) were shot dead by Israeli Defence Force troops. The two were from the village of Anabta, near the town of Tulkarm, in Palestine's West Bank. Tulkarm was founded in the 13th century, its name derived from [...]
Apr 4 2013 | Posted in Articles, Features | Read More �
By Awad Abdel Fattah I was fortunate this week. I had a quick and easy crossing from Jordan back into Israel. No delays, no questions, no invasive body searches and no lengthy rummaging through my luggage. The border guard sitting next to the computer took my passport, opened it and looked at the screen, presumably [...]
By Jamal Kanj Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a $3.9 billion national budget for the 2013 fiscal year just one day before the March 31 deadline. The budget was approved without the required constitutional review and endorsement of the Palestine National Council. The state's projected revenue for this year is $2.6bn, leaving a deficit of [...]
By Ramzy Baroud 'Confused' may be an appropriate term to describe Turkey's current foreign policy in the Middle East and Israel in particular. The source of that confusion - aside from the appalling violence in Syria and earlier in Libya - is Turkey's own mistakes. The Turkish government's inconsistency regarding Israel highlights earlier discrepancy in [...]
By Zoriah - Zoriah.net Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh are a sad place to be in. People are stuck in impossible situations, having fled their homes and their lives only to end up in one of the worlds most impoverished and over populated countries. They live in camps where they are not allowed to work, [...]
Apr 1 2013 | Posted in Articles, Features | Read More �
By William A. Cook "Put yourself in their shoes. Look at the world through their eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements not just of those young people but [...]
By Sahar Mansour Times change, situations change, people change. This is how the world has always been, and this can definitely be said about these turbulent first decades of this 21st century. For this reason, it's nice to know that there are also things and people that seem to be weathering these changes, and stubbornly [...]
Apr 1 2013 | Posted in Articles, Reviews | Read More �
By Richard Falk (The Prisoners' Diaries: Palestinian Voices from the Israeli Gulag, edited by Norma Hashim, in close collaboration with the Centre for Political & Development Studies, Gaza, 2013) There are many moving passages that can be found in these excerpts from prison diaries and recollections of 22 Palestinians. What is most compelling is how [...]
Apr 1 2013 | Posted in Articles, Reviews | Read More �
Ramzy Baroud, originally from Gaza, is a Palestinian-American journalist and author, former producer for al-Jazeera, and Editor in Chief of The Palestine Chronicle, shared at the Rachel Corrie - 10 Years: The Person and the Continuing Struggle Saturday, March 16th A dynamic day of social action, speakers, music, dance, food, remembrance, and community!
Mar 29 2013 | Posted in Articles, Videos | Read More �
By Uri Avnery So, finally, our Prime Minister has apologized to Turkey for "operational mistakes" that "might have" led to the death of nine Turks during the attack on MV Mavi Marmara, the ship which tried to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza. It took him two years and ten months to do so. Hallelujah. [...]
By Eva Bartlett "An ark is literally a large floating vessel designed to keep its passengers and cargo safe," say the group preparing 'Gaza's Ark'. But their ark, they say, is "a vessel that embodies hope that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip can soon live in peace without the threat of the Israeli blockade." [...]
Mar 28 2013 | Posted in Articles, Features | Read More �
By Jamal Kanj Writing about Syria is emotionally draining and intellectually overwhelming. Evident by the level of destruction and killing, the mutual hatred between President Bashar Al Assad's regime and the armed opposition surpasses their love of country. More than 70,000 have been killed and, not counting internally displaced Syrians, there are more than one [...]
By Stuart Littlewood The tears shed by assorted media at the news of David Miliband's departure from British politics for a new life in New York had me reaching once again for the sick-bag. "British politics will be a poorer place without David," said brother Ed, leader of the Labour Party. Will it? I'm pleased [...]
By Felicity Arbuthnot - London 'Why should we hear about body bags and deaths ... I mean, it's not relevant, so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that ...' - (Former First Lady, Barbara Bush, Good Morning America, 18th March 2003.) In these days of the tenth anniversary of the illegal [...]
By Ludwig Watzal (Unfree in Palestine. Registration, Documentation and Movement Restriction by Nadia Abu-Zahra and Adah Kay, Pluto Press, London 2013, pp. 232, L 17.99.) The latest visit by U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama to Israel has demonstrated to the world on which side the Empire stands. Obama promised an occupying power absolute support and [...]
Mar 27 2013 | Posted in Articles, Reviews | Read More �
By Jeremy Salt - Ankara In the ugly panorama that is the contemporary Middle East a light hardly flickers on the horizon. Iraq has been destroyed as a unitary Arab state and jihadis unleashed in Syria are burning out another room in the Arab house. Lebanon has again been brought to the brink of implosion [...]
(For the trajectory of the Palestinian struggle, Abulhawa searches for lessons from the past, neo-liberal thought, and Black Consciousness) By Susan Abulhawa It's safe to say that a book you can't put down is a good one. But I've come across a novel I can't recommend enough, even though it took me months to finish. [...]
By Giorgio Cafiero As Syria's civil war enters its third year, the country's humanitarian crisis worsens each day and the Levant grows increasingly vulnerable to the conflict's spillover. In mid-February, the United Nations reported a death toll "nearing 70,000." Today, one in four Syrians is internally displaced or living abroad as a refugee. No dialogue [...]
Mar 26 2013 | Posted in Articles, Features | Read More �
By Ramzy Baroud At the precise moment US President Barack Obama's Air Force One touched down at Ben Gurion Airport on March 20, persisting illusions quickly began to shatter. And as he walked on the red carpet, showered with accolades and warm embraces of top Israeli government and military officials, a new/old reality began to [...]
By Sharon Dolev Around the world, when it comes to nuclear weapons, it is a well know "secret" that Israel is a Nuclear Armed State. Just like India and Pakistan, Israel has developed a nuclear arsenal, but unlike the two, Israel's arsenal remains a secret. Israel doesn't talk about its arsenal and usually, doesn't take [...]
By Ali Younes When the April issue of the Atlantic published an article by its national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg about his interview and impressions of King Abdullah of Jordan, Jordan was swept in a political storm that has yet to quiet down. The problem isn't with what the king actually said in the interview, rather [...]
By Hasan Afif El-Hasan Since achieving military hegemony over its neighboring states and forging a strategic -indeed paramount- relationship with the US, the world's sole military superpower, Israel as a settler-colonial state felt free to colonize the occupied Arab lands. The Israelis changed the name of the West Bank to the Biblical names of Judea [...]
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LATEST NEWS
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Kerry Urges Abbas to Restart Peace Talks
US Secretary of State John Kerry has met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of a fresh US bid to restart negotiations between Israel and Palestine.
Kerry is on a 10-day tour, which will also take him to Asia, and met Abbas in Ramallah on Sunday after holding talks earlier in the day with Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul.
While in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Kerry will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Abbas told visiting Kerry that the release of prisoners held by Israel was a "top priority" for resuming failed peace talks.
"President Abbas stressed that the release of the prisoners is a priority that creates an appropriate climate for the possibility of moving the peace process forward," his spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
Abbas told Kerry that releasing the 4,500 or so prisoners held in Israeli jails, a deeply sensitive issue on the Palestinian street, was a "top priority for creating the right atmosphere for the resumption of negotiations".
Al Jazeera's Nicole Johnstone in Ramallah reported that the priority for the US was for "both sides to return to talks without any preconditions".
But, she said, "the Israelis are saying that they want the Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, and the Palestinians want Israel to stop its settlement construction".
Most Palestinians reject the idea of recognising Israel as a "Jewish-only" state because many still demand the right of return for refugees who decades ago were forced from their homes in what is now Israel.
Israel-Turkey Relations
During earlier talks with Davutoglu in Istanbul, Kerry urged Turkey and Israel to fully normalise relations, after Israel's US-brokered apology for a deadly 2010 raid on a Gaza aid flotilla organised by a Turkish charity.
"We would like to see this relationship that is important to stability in Middle East, critical to the peace process itself, we would like to see it back on track in its full," Kerry said in a joint news conference with Davutoglu.
He said, however, that it was not for the United States "to be setting conditions or terms" for the reconciliation.
Israel apologised to Ankara on March 22 for the deaths of nine Turkish activists in a botched raid by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound aid ship, in a breakthrough engineered by US President Barack Obama during a visit to Jerusalem.
The apology ended a nearly three-year rift between Israel and Turkey - two key US allies in the region - and the two countries are due to begin talks on compensation on Friday.
But they have yet to exchange ambassadors and fully restore diplomatic ties.
"It is imperative that the compensation component be fulfilled, that the ambassadors be returned," Kerry said. "I'm confident there will be goodwill on both sides."
'Oases of Stability'
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accepted the Israeli apology "in the name of the Turkish people" but said the country's future relationship with Israel including the return of ambassadors would depend on Israel.
Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Istanbul, said that Davutoglu had already spoken to Khaled Meshaal, the leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Mahmoud Abbas.
"We don't know what they discussed, but its an indication that Turkey is taking some sort of interest in the Middle East peace process," said Smith.
He added that Kerry "wants Turkey to normalise its relationship with Israel because it sees Israel, Turkey and Jordan as three oases of stability in a very turbulent region."
The US top diplomat also commended Turkey's efforts to provide for the tens of thousands of refugees who have entered the country during Syria's two-year conflict.
He called Turkey "incredibly generous" for keeping its border open and doing "everything possible" to respond to the increasing humanitarian crisis in the neighbouring country.
"The US and Turkey will continue cooperating to reach the shared goal of a peaceful transition in Syria," he said, repeating the US position that President Bashar al-Assad must leave power.
"Thousands of Syrians have lost their lives," Davutoglu said. "The international community needs to act on this. The failure to do so would be interpreted by Assad as a weakness.
"The US position is important and so is Turkey's."
(Al Jazeera And Agencies - AlJazeera.com)
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SELECTED NEWS
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US Secretary of State John Kerry has met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of a fresh US bid to restart negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Kerry is on a 10-day tour, which will also take him to Asia, and met Abbas in Ramallah on Sunday after holding talks earlier in the day with Turkish [...]
Apr 8 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
A weekend cyberattack campaign has targeted Israeli government websites but failed to cause serious disruption, officials say. Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, of the government's National Cyber Bureau, said on Sunday that hackers had mostly failed to shut down key sites. "So far it is as was expected, there is hardly any real damage," Ben Yisrael said. [...]
Apr 8 2013 | Posted in News, slider | Read More �
The family of hunger striker Samer Issawi handed a letter to EU officials on Monday demanding his release from Israeli prison custody, a Palestinian official said. Issawi's family handed the letter to the Office of the European Union Representative in East Jerusalem, former minister of Jerusalem affairs Hatim Abdul-Qadir told Ma'an. Several representatives of Palestinian [...]
Apr 8 2013 | Posted in News, slider | Read More �
UNRWA will resume distributing food aid to refugees in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said. The UN agency stopped food deliveries after dozens of protesters forced their way into its Gaza field office last Thursday, demanding reinstatement of a monthly cash allowance to poor families which was halted from [...]
Apr 8 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
The main UN humanitarian agency for Palestinians said it was suspending operations in the Gaza Strip after demonstrators angered by aid cutbacks stormed its headquarters. Some 800,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of Gaza's population, depend on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the shuttering, announced on Thursday, could exacerbate hardship caused by Israeli and [...]
Apr 5 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
President Mahmoud Abbas will temporarily refrain from unilateral action against Israel to give US-brokered peace talks a chance to resume, a Palestinian official said on Thursday. "Abbas and the Palestinian leadership have decided to give a sufficient chance for (US Secretary of State John) Kerry's efforts to succeed," the official told AFP, speaking on condition [...]
Apr 4 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
Thousands of Palestinians have taken to the streets in the occupied West Bank in a show of anger over the deaths of two Palestinian protesters killed in clashes with Israel and a third who died of cancer in an Israeli prison. In the city of Hebron (Al-Khalil), thousands of people turned out on Thursday for [...]
Apr 4 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
Israeli warplanes bombed the Gaza Strip early Wednesday, causing damage but no injuries, in the first airstrike on the enclave since a November ceasefire. Two airstrikes hit a tile factory in the Shujaiyeh neighborhood, east of Gaza City, and farm land in Beit Lahiya in the north, locals said. The raids were the first since [...]
Apr 3 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
Israeli prison doctors refused to treat Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who died in Israeli custody on Tuesday, and gave the cancer sufferer painkillers and antibiotics, his lawyer said. Rami Alami visited Abu Hamdiyeh in Eshel prison on March 12, and a record of his visit reveals the prisoner's long struggle with Israeli authorities for medical treatment. [...]
Apr 3 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who died on Tuesday as a prisoner of Israel, was a married father of four who spent decades of his life in exile. Born in Hebron on Sept. 25, 1949, Abu Hamdiyeh was first imprisoned by Israel in 1969, accused of membership of the General Union of Palestinian Students. Abu Hamdiyeh received [...]
Apr 2 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
Israeli prison guards have fired teargas on Palestinian inmates in several Israeli jails who have been protesting the death of a prisoner who died of cancer. Maisara Abu Hamdiyeh, who was serving a life sentence in Israeli jail, died of throat cancer on Tuesday. Palestinians blame Israel for a late diagnosis and lack of proper [...]
Apr 2 2013 | Posted in News | Read More �
Hamas has re-elected its veteran leader, Khaled Meshaal, in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, two Hamas officials said. "The leaders of Hamas chose Meshaal," a high-ranking official told the AFP news agency by telephone from Cairo on Monday, requesting anonymity. The officials said the majority of the group's Shura council members voted for Meshaal. They spoke [...]
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The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. To contact the editor, submit an article or any other material, please write to: editor@palestinechronicle.com. For other inquiries write to: info@palestinechronicle.com. |
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