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ICC sends team to assess Israel ‘justice’ system

Palestinian men work on the remains of a building destroyed during Israel’s 50-day war against the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014, in Gaza City, April 30, 2016. (Photo by AFP)

An International Criminal Court (ICC) team is to visit the Palestinian territories to examine the competence of the Israeli “justice” system to investigate the regime’s deadly 2014 war on Gaza.

Should The Hague-based court deem the Israeli judicial authorities incapable of conducting or unwilling to perform a decent investigation of the war, the tribunal would take the matter into its own hands.

The ICC has been considering a visit to the Palestinian territories for more than a year since Palestinian authorities raised a complaint about war crimes committed in the Gaza war and Tel Aviv’s ongoing construction of illegal settlements on occupied lands.

On August 24, the Israeli army released a statement saying it had closed 13 criminal investigations into cases of violations against Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers during the war without imposing any punitive measures.

An Israeli official reported on Friday that the ICC working group would arrive in the territories “shortly,” AFP reported. The official said the visit — which is to take place at the request of ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (seen below) — was intended to probe “how the Israeli judicial system works.”

The official did not specify if the team would be given access to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The 50-day Israeli military aggression against Gaza, which ended on August 26, 2014, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children. Over 11,100 others — including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people — were also wounded in the war.

Apart from several bloody wars it has waged against the enclave, Tel Aviv sends its warplanes on sporadic fatal forays over the territory.

The Gaza Strip has also been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.


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