NEW DELHI (CU)_Israel is urging India to take a stand against a ruling last week by the International Criminal Court (ICC) claiming jurisdiction over Palestinian territories, although, Delhi is reluctant to heed to the request, official sources say.
Two days after ICC’s decision, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting India to speak out against the Court’s ruling, and to send a clear message to the ICC “to stop this assault on justice and common sense”.
However, Delhi has not responded to Netanyahu’s communication, and sources say that instead, it has been conveyed through diplomatic channels that since India is not party to the founding treaty of the ICC – the Rome Statute – therefore, the South Asian nation does not want to comment on any of the court’s rulings.
In December 2019, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda concluded that the Court’s initial findings are a sufficient basis for an investigation into war crimes being committed in Palestinian territories of West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, and she named both the Israeli Defence Forces and Hamas as possible perpetrators.
However, Israel, which is also not a member of the Rome Statute, claims that the ICC has no authority over the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, since Israel does not recognise the Court’s jurisdiction and the Palestinian Authority is not a sovereign state.
Nevertheless, on February 5, the Court ruled that it did have jurisdiction over the situation, on the basis of Palestine’s 2015 accession to the Rome Statute after its acceptance as a “non-member observer state” of the UN General Assembly in 2012.
Israel in fact expected a positive response from Delhi, especially as the ruling could set precedent, which may affect India on Kashmir or other troubled spots, sources say. And although it was “not a break or make issue” in bilateral ties between India and Israel, nonetheless, experts believe that a positive response from Delhi would have been “important”.
