Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has slammed the decision by the International Criminal Court to launch a preliminary investigation into possible war crimes in the Palestinian territories, saying it is absurd. Speaking in West Jerusalem yesterday, Netanyahu said it is absurd of the ICC to ignore international law and agreements under which the Palestinians do not have a state and can only get one through direct negotiations with Israel.
The rules of the ICC are clear, No state, no standing, no case. Netanyahu said Israel upholds high standards of international law and that the country's actions are subjected to careful and constant review of an independent legal system. Palestine applied to join the ICC in December and has since signed the Rome treaty, the charter that led to the formation of the ICC in 2002. It is due to join the court in April but its membership will be backdated to June 2014, meaning that the court will have jurisdiction to look into last summer's offensive between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. The conflict, which left the Gaza Strip run by Hamas devastated, killed more than 2,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children. Israel says it lost 73 people, most of them soldiers. |
Save Dissent to Save Democracy THE rising instances of physical violence and threats against political opponents and the inability to accept dissent must raise huge concerns amongst all of us who see democracy as perhaps the really stellar achievement since Independence. AAP’s attack on BJP headquarters and acts of arson committed under the very noses of their elite leadership; the attacks on Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia in Gujarat in the last two days; the recent manhandling of the caretaker of journalist Siddharth Varadarajan’s house by some garden variety thugs; and the violence and threats meted out regularly to their political opponents by political parties is surely deplorable and condemnable. This is a fatally flawed trend which will destroy the very foundations of our democratic institutions if not pushed back with all the strength and condemnation that the civil society can mobilise. Replaying the past To begin with, it must be clarified that we should ...
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