No sooner had the dust settled in Gaza following Israel's July 23 assassination of Hamas leader Salah Shehada - an operation that took the lives of 15 civilians, many of them children - than Palestinian officials began declaring this act the first war crime committed since the inauguration of the International Criminal Court (ICC) on July 1, 2002.
Calls to bring Israel to book before the new court multiplied, until legal experts weighed in with deflating news. The 1998 Rome Statute, which established the ICC, specifies that the court can only exercise jurisdiction over crimes occurring on the territory of a state party, or crimes involving an accused who is a national of a state party. Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Further, as Avril McDonald of Amsterdam's Asser Institute noted: "Palestine is not a country." Until a Palestinian state is recognized by the international community, and signs the relevant instruments of international law, Palestinians "cannot pursue justice independently."
But Palestinians and others do have alternative venues for pursuing justice and halting impunity for war crimes and grave human rights violations not covered by the ICC's mandate. Spain's 1998 extradition of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, then in London, to stand trial for human rights abuses committed in Chile from 1973-1990 awakened the world to the possibility of trials in national courts utilizing the principle of universal jurisdiction.
Calls to bring Israel to book before the new court multiplied, until legal experts weighed in with deflating news. The 1998 Rome Statute, which established the ICC, specifies that the court can only exercise jurisdiction over crimes occurring on the territory of a state party, or crimes involving an accused who is a national of a state party. Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute. Further, as Avril McDonald of Amsterdam's Asser Institute noted: "Palestine is not a country." Until a Palestinian state is recognized by the international community, and signs the relevant instruments of international law, Palestinians "cannot pursue justice independently."
But Palestinians and others do have alternative venues for pursuing justice and halting impunity for war crimes and grave human rights violations not covered by the ICC's mandate. Spain's 1998 extradition of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, then in London, to stand trial for human rights abuses committed in Chile from 1973-1990 awakened the world to the possibility of trials in national courts utilizing the principle of universal jurisdiction.