Tayseer Khaled, member of the PLO’s Executive Committee and Head of the Palestinian Expatriate Affairs Department, has described the referral of the Palestinian situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a qualitative step, adding that the leaders have to be reckoned for the series of crimes they have committed against the Palestinian people under occupation, including settlement crimes.
Khaled said, according to the PNN, that those targeted for reckoning and prosecution are all Israeli members of the Knesset, which enacts laws that encourage settlement, and the judicial system; i.e. the Ministry of Justice, the Court of Justice and other competent courts that discuss and approve the confiscation of public and private Palestinian lands, as well as the Prime Minister, Ministers of the occupation Army, Housing, Education, and others who lead such activities and allocate large sums of money to establish them, the military and security officers who issue orders to demolish the Palestinian properties, Nir Barkat Municipality in Jerusalem, leaders of the Settlements Council and the local councils of settlements and Jewish terrorist organizations who take settlements and settlement outposts as safe places for their crimes, protected by the Israeli army and police.
Lastly, Khaled called for the formation of a Palestinian national commission, in order to document and follow-up the occupation and its officials’ crimes, their names and addresses, their involvement, planning and implementation of settlement activities, and keeping such data in a national data bank, available for specialists and experts to assist them in the filing of indictments, at the ICC, against Israeli officials involved in encouraging and promoting settlement, and by this conforming to the level of war crimes, under the provisions of article VIII of the Statute of the ICC.
Accordingly, he says, they will be brought before the international justice, and the national courts in all democratic countries to deal with them so as to enhance respect for international law and achieve global justice.
