Shurat Hadin, the Israel Law Center, has targeted three more Palestinian officials for war crimes prosecutions in the International Criminal Court, The Times of Israel reported Monday.
The three officials named in the complaints filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC) are “PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, Abbas’s deputy; minister Jibril Rajoub; and PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj.” All three are members Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party.
The case brought against Faraj and Hamdallah details widespread torture and killings of Palestinian residents who reside in areas under PA control, according to a statement released by the group.
“Faraj and Hamdallah, as commanders in the Palestinian security services, are directly responsible for widespread human rights violations committed [in the West Bank] against regular Palestinians by units under their authority,” the statement read.
According to the indictment, Rajoub, too, was fully aware of the violations it listed and should be held “accountable for the actions committed under his auspices by his subordinates in the organization,” the statement read.
In its press release detailing the complaints, Shurat Hadin notes:
Our complaint demands the investigation and arrest of Rajoub, a leader of Fatah during the Gaza War, at which time the terrorist group fired numerous rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. Under international law, targeting civilians with deadly weapons is a war crime.
Fatah has boasted on its FACEBOOK page and in other social media that it was responsible for launching rockets at Israel this summer. As a senior Fatah leader, Rajoub should be held responsible for the actions of his subordinates who act in accordance with the terrorist faction’s policies and goals. The terrorist rocket attacks from Gaza left numerous Israelis dead and injured.
The press release quotes Shurat Hadin Director Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who stated:
“The Palestinian leadership is playing with fire. The Palestine Authority can only file complaints going forward, because court jurisdiction over acts committed within its territory begins at the date that a state joins the court. Abbas can only complain about future events which occur in the presently undefined territory of the Palestinian Authority because Abbas attempted to join the ICC only now. The Palestinian leadership, however, may be tried by the ICC for the many terrorist acts and human rights abuses, including the Second Intifada, for which they are responsible, dating back to 2002 because they are Jordanian citizens and that is when Jordan joined the court.”
Hamdallah, Faraj and Rajoub are all Jordanian citizens and are subject to the jurisdiction of the ICC. In September Shurat Hadin filed a similar complaint against Hamas official Khaled Meshaal and in November one against Abbas. Abbas and Meshaal are also both Jordanian citizens.
In The Woman Who Makes the Jihadis Squirm, a profile of Darshan-Leitner that was published in the February 2014 issue of The Tower Magazine, editor David Hazony explained the effect Shurat Hadin has on terrorist organizations:
By forcing terrorists to hire lawyers, accountants, and public relations firms, you have squeezed them into the rubric of civilizational order. You put them on their heels. Instead of aggressively planning their next attack, they started worrying where the next lawsuit or court action would come from.
The moment you recognize that terrorism is not a pathology but a deliberate methodology that counts on chaos to undermine your life, you have already taken the first step to containing, controlling, and defeating it.