http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/02/world/middleeast/court-membership-wouldnt-guarantee-palestinians-a-war-crimes-case.html 2015-01-02 03:16:30 Court Membership Wouldn’t Guarantee Palestinians a War Crimes Case Even if the Palestinian Authority joins the International Criminal Court, the legal repercussions from the Gaza war last summer would take longer to resolve and face many hurdles. === JERUSALEM — The political fallout from the Israel But legal repercussions from The cases Palestinians plan to bring against Israel, and potential counterclaims against Palestinian officials, are unlike any the “It may jump at the chance because it’s under fire,” Geoffrey Robertson, a British lawyer and author, said of the court, which he follows closely. “This is an opportunity to get out of the endless African wars and to do something which is very much in the public eye, and very much of public importance,” he added. “It would be a new and possibly productive way to deal with the cloudy legalities.” But other legal scholars said the Michael P. Scharf, the dean of the Case Western Reserve University law school in Ohio, said that past cases “involved hundreds of thousands or at least tens of thousands of deaths,” and that the court “requires that they be committed as part of a policy or plan, and not simply incidental to attacks on enemy targets.” As for the settlements, Robbie Sabel, an international law professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said delving into them would put the court in the awkward position of essentially defining the borders of a Palestinian state. “Up to now the crimes they have dealt with are mass murders and rapes, not where a border is, an issue which is clearly political,” said Mr. Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry. “My assumption is that on the political issue of where the border should be, whether East Jerusalem should be part of the Palestinian state, they would hesitate.” Prime Minister “If they want to open up the legal arena, Israel has many tools,” Mr. Gold said on Israeli radio. Citing cases in which victims’ families have sued Iran in American courts for sponsoring terrorism, he added, “if there is property belonging to the Palestinian Authority in the United States and the Palestinian Authority is involved in terror attacks against Israeli citizens, we can help them with claims all over the world.” The papers the Palestinians signed Wednesday acceding to the There are also technical questions regarding the contours of Palestinian territory, the definition of Palestinian citizenship and the timetable for potential cases. Even preliminary inquiries can last for years. Some experts say any incidents since the court was created are fair game, while others say the court can deal only with matters since the United Nations General Assembly Mr. Jabarin said the commission, with which Israel has refused to cooperate, would provide an initial report in March that could serve as a road map for the Hague court. Separately, his group and others have been documenting allegations of Israeli war crimes in Gaza, and are working with the Palestinian Authority to prepare complaints about Israeli settlements. “The crime is not just the rape and the widespread killing or something like that, but also to transfer civilians and to confiscate land and to destroy property,” Mr. Jabarin said. “It’s a different way of rape, it’s a different way of killing, it’s a different way of destruction.” The court defines a war crime as “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power, of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Nearly 700,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory Israel captured from Jordan in the “Crimes of aggression” may be added to the court’s mandate in 2017, possibly including the annexation of lands — which Israel undertook in East Jerusalem as well as the Golan Heights — military occupation and the blockade of coasts, as many international critics refer to Israel’s restrictions on Gaza’s waterways. But the court has not yet dealt with such issues. Experts said thousands of complaints had been submitted — In November, the court’s chief prosecutor Mr. Scharf, of Case Western, said any action in The Hague was “likely to unfold over a period of several years,” if at all. Gaza “is not a case the I.C.C. prosecutor is eager to take on, given its immense geopolitical implications,” he said in an email, and although settlements “may be inconsistent with international law,” the court was “highly unlikely to consider them a crime against humanity or war crime.” After the criticism she faced over the Kenya case, he added, “I would think the I.C.C. prosecutor would be more cautious.”