Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh on Friday praised the International Criminal Court for ruling it had jurisdiction over the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.
"This decision (of the ICC) is a victory for justice and humanity, for the values of truth, fairness and freedom, and for the blood of the victims and their families," Shtayyeh said, according to the official Wafa news agency.
The move is a "message to perpetrators" who "will not go unpunished", Shtayyeh added, calling on the ICC to speed up legal proceedings over the 2014 conflict in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian prisoners and the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had asked the court for its legal opinion on whether its reach extended to areas occupied by Israel, after announcing in December 2019 that she wanted to start a full probe.
The ICC said in a statement it had "decided, by majority, that the Court's territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine, a State party to the ICC Rome Statute, extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the ICC a "political body", saying the court's decision undermined the "right of democracies to defend themselves against terrorism".
Gaza, an Israel-blockaded territory, is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas.
Israel has fought three wars with Hamas since the Islamists ousted loyalists of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas from the territory in 2007.
(Published 06 February 2021, 04:26 IST)
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