‘War crimes’: Palestine calls on ICC to investigate Israeli ‘human rights violations’

RT

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has asked the International Criminal Court to open a probe into Israeli violations against Palestinians, linked to illegal settlements, calling Tel Aviv’s actions “crimes against humanity”. 

The settlements are “the single most dangerous threat to Palestinian lives, livelihoods, and national rights,” the ministry said in a statement released on Facebook. Israel called the move “cynical” and claimed the request to the ICC has no legal validity.

Saying that while “Israel maintains, expands, and protects the settlement regime by committing war crimes, crimes against humanity,” Palestinians are not seeking revenge but redress and “justice for the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

Palestine exercised its right as a State Party to the Rome Statute – the treaty that established the ICC – to refer the situation in the region to the international tribunal. The ministry says that Palestinian people “continue to suffer from ongoing, widespread and systematic crimes” committed by Israel.

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African Union Says 'Up Yours' to International Criminal Court

BAR

 
The African Union found the spine to reject execution of an arrest warrant against Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi issued by the International Criminal Court, which appears to have an "Africans only" indictment policy. The AU’s chairman calls the court’s prosecutions "discriminatory" because they ignore the West’s crimes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. China has hosted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, another ICC arrest target.

"The AU decided, finally, that it can stand up to the International Criminal Court.

"The African Union is asking all of its 53 members not to buckle under to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The International Criminal Court, or ICC, has never indicted anyone but Africans, and many consider it to be a tool of the United States. The Obama administration gives constant lip service to the Court, even though the U.S. is not a member of the ICC and has refused to make its own policies and military answerable to any outside authority. [...]