Acceso usuarios
Emanuele Cimiotta
On February 5, 2021 the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court ruled that Palestine qualifies as a State Party to the Rome Statute and therefore is a territorial State for the purposes of Article 12 (2) (a) of the Statute. This regardless of the issue of Palestinian statehood under international law, which the Chamber found that it was not competent to address. Moreover, the Chamber decided that the Court's territorial jurisdiction extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, the Chamber's ruling unduly reduces the bearing that general international law — including rules concerning matters of statehood, the interpretation of treaties, the legal personality of international organizations and the conferral of powers upon them — would have on the question whether, and to what extent, the Court has jurisdiction with regard to the situation of Palestine. In particular, it opens up to the idea that in contemporary international law there is no single notion of State.
