Al Jazeera reported Friday that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has been “balking” at the prospect of calling on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch an investigation into Israeli actions during Operation Protective Edge.

In a confidential letter obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, the ICC’s top prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said she “did not receive a positive confirmation” from PA Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki that the request submitted for an international investigation had the Palestinian government’s approval. …

In August, Malki met with ICC officials to discuss the implications of ratifying the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the criminal court. “Everything that has happened…is clear evidence of war crimes committed by Israel, amounting to crimes against humanity,” he told reporters in The Hague, referring to the recent 51-day Israeli military offensive on Gaza, which left more than 2,100 Palestinians dead. Six Israeli civilians were killed, along with 66 Israeli soldiers.

In order to ask the ICC to look into Israeli actions, the PA would  have to join the Rome Statute, but that would make the PA liable to prosecution by the ICC. This is one of the reasons Abbas is believed to be rethinking his repeated threat to seek war crimes prosecutions against Israel.

Another reason the PA may be hesitant to set a war crimes investigation in motion is the ramifications it may have on some Palestinian factions. The ICC would likely look into Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s rocket-firing on Israeli towns, and investigate Israeli allegations that the Islamist movement used civilian human shields.

In May, after the PA agreed to establish a unity government with Hamas, former ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo discouraged the PA from joining the ICC, warning that if “they accepted its jurisdiction … the Palestinians could also be investigated for Hamas rocket attacks and suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.”

The PA has previously had trouble upholding international law. Earlier this year, in an effort to circumvent negotiations with Israel, the PA joined a number of international treaties and were immediately in violation of eleven of them.

During Operation Protective Edge, Palestinian delegate to the UN Human Rights Council, Ibrahim Khreisheh, outlined the problem with the PA joining the ICC:

He goes on to say that Hamas, firing from PA controlled areas, does not warn civilians before firing on them and by doing so is committing a war crime: “As for the missiles launched from our side, we never warn anyone about where these missiles are about to fall, or about the operation we carry out.”
The envoy concludes by saying that the PA has no hope of pressing charges against Israel in international courts: “Therefore, people should know more before they talk emotionally about appealing to the ICC.”

Despite the repeated war crimes committed by his organization, Ma’an news service reports today that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is pushing the PA to join the ICC in an effort to pursue war crimes charges against Israel.

In How Hamas Destroys its People as Seen Through the Eyes of IDF Soldiers, published in the September 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, Yardena Schwartz writes:

Below is a collection of personal stories gathered from soldiers who saw with their own eyes Palestinian civilians being used as strategic elements of Hamas’ fight against Israel. In some cases, only first names have been used in order to protect identities, as some were still in the midst of the operation when interviewed.
While they all served in different units, and fought different battles, some from the sky and some from the ground, all of them spoke of their painstaking efforts to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians at the risk of their own lives. Each soldier interviewed for this story had his own personal account, sometimes several accounts, of trying to avoid civilian casualties in the face of Hamas efforts to exploit them. And all of the soldiers shared the same frustration that despite all of their painstaking efforts, the world continues to view Israel’s war in Gaza as a war against humanity, when in their eyes, it is very much a war against a terrorist organization that has taken its own people hostage.

[Photo: Olivier Pacteau / YouTube ]