The Palestinian Authority government is considering an appeal to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague, over the White House’s decision to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, PA Ambassador to Russia Abdel Hafiz Nofal told TASS in an exclusive interview Tuesday, ahead of Mahmoud Abbas’s trip to Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.
“We are going to appeal to any organization and any institution,” the diplomat asserted. “[on February 20), Mahmoud Abbas will … address the UN and will openly touch upon all these issues,” the diplomat added.
Earlier, the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stated its intention to seek legal action in the United Nations Security Council, the General Assembly, and the ICC, to appeal against Israeli moves and “to start a judicial inquiry into Israeli settlements, racial discrimination and the ongoing ethnic cleansing in and around Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the area south of Hebron.”
For the record, the ICC’s jurisdiction is to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. It doesn’t say anything about the crime of moving an embassy.
Of course, on 26 July 1994, a group calling itself the “Palestinian Resistance Jaffa Group’ detonated a car bomb next to the Israeli embassy in London, injuring 20 civilians and causing serious damage to the building, so, yes, in some cases moving an embassy is a war crime.