{"id":137996,"date":"2014-08-22T16:43:11","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T16:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=137996"},"modified":"2014-08-22T16:43:41","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T16:43:41","slug":"happen-palestine-joined-international-criminal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/happen-palestine-joined-international-criminal-court\/","title":{"rendered":"What would happen if Palestine joined the International Criminal Court?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Dr. Michael Kearney<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What would happen if Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas signs up to join the International Criminal Court (ICC)? The question has acquired a certain urgency amid the Israeli attack on Gaza and\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #000066;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/news\/exclusive-hamas-pushes-abbas-join-icc-316559675\">reports<\/a>\u00a0that the Palestinian political parties, including Hamas, are now committed to joining it.<\/p>\n<p>The first thing to note is that since it began operations in 2002, the court hasn\u2019t been much of a success. Each individual, including several heads of state indicted by the court, have so far been African, leading to\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #000066;\" href=\"http:\/\/justiceinconflict.org\/2012\/02\/22\/is-the-icc-racist\/\">condemnation<\/a>\u00a0that it is a tool of western neo-colonialism.<\/p>\n<p>The flipside to this African focus has been a shift in the original US policy of militant opposition to the body towards a more\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #000066;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2014\/05\/15\/is_the_icc_thinking_about_prosecuting_us_soldiers_in_afghanistan\">nuanced<\/a>\u00a0relationship, where the US and the United Nations Security Council have seen the ICC as a useful tool in certain foreign adventures, for example, in\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #000066;\" href=\"http:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/tags\/libya\">Libya<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From the perspective of academics, activists and legal professionals, the\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; color: #000066;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignaffairs.com\/articles\/67768\/david-kaye\/whos-afraid-of-the-international-criminal-court\">record<\/a>\u00a0of the Office of the Prosecutor and the judges themselves has fed widespread frustration and significant concern that the institution does not have the capacity to make itself fit for purpose.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/electronicintifada.net\/content\/what-would-happen-if-palestine-joined-international-criminal-court\/13783\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Michael Kearney What would happen if Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas signs up to join the International Criminal Court (ICC)? The question has acquired a certain urgency amid the Israeli attack on Gaza and\u00a0reports\u00a0that the Palestinian political parties, including Hamas, are now committed to joining it. The first thing to note is that since [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,16],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-137996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-war-terrorism"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}