The Palestinian U.N. observer mission on Friday delivered to U.N. headquarters signed documentation on joining the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and more than a dozen other international treaties.
The chief Palestinian observer, Riyad Mansour, and U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed the handover at the United Nations.
"This is a very significant step," Mansour told reporters, adding that the step was necessary in order to seek justice for crimes against the Palestinian people.
According to the Rome Statute, the Palestinians will become a party to the court on the first day of the month that follows a 60-day waiting period after depositing signed and ratified documents of accession with the United Nations in New York.
The ICC move, which has angered Israel and the United States, paves the way for the court to take jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestinian lands and investigate the conduct of both Israeli and Palestinian leaders over more than a decade of bloody conflict. Neither Israel nor the United States belongs to the ICC.
Mansour said he would meet in New York on Friday with an official from the ICC to request retroactive jurisdiction "with regard to the crimes committed during the last war in Gaza." He was referring to Israel's 50-day war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip this past summer.
Regarding the threat of possible U.S. sanctions or cuts in aid for joining the ICC, Mansour said: "It is really puzzling when you seek justice through a legal approach to be punished for doing so."
U.S. officials say that around $400 million in annual aid could be in jeopardy after the Palestinian move to join The Hague-based court, which looks at cases of severe war crimes and crimes against humanity, such as genocide.
The other signed treaties the Palestinians delivered to the United Nations include the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, two additional protocols to the Geneva Conventions and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.
The Palestinian government signed the Rome Statute on Wednesday, a day after a bid for independence by 2017 failed at the U.N. Security Council.
Palestinians seek a state in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem - lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War.
Momentum to recognize a Palestinian state has built up since Abbas succeeded in a bid for de facto recognition of Palestinian statehood at the U.N. General Assembly in 2012, which made Palestinians eligible to join the ICC.
REUTERS
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