International Criminal Court Pre-Trial Chambers Decision on the Court’s Territorial Jurisdiction in Palestine

The Rome Statute, a multilateral treaty deposited with the United Nations (UN), created the separate International Criminal Court (ICC) and gave the ICC jurisdiction over certain types of crimes if the crime occurred in the territory of a state that had joined the Rome Statute. The Rome Statute stated that it was open for “all States” to join. In 2009, the Palestinian National Authority (Palestine) (plaintiff) submitted a request to the UN to join the Rome Statute treaty. Palestine was not an official member state of the UN, and its international status as a sovereign state was a contentious matter. In 2012, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution giving Palestine “non-member observer State status” in the UN. The resolution specifically did not claim to determine whether Palestine was a state generally and expressly limited the status to Palestine’s status within the UN. However, the resolution also affirmed that the Palestinian people had a sovereign right to “the occupied Palestinian territory,” which was disputed territory over which Palestine and Israel (defendant) both claimed legal rights. As a nonmember observer state, Palestine declared that it was joining the Rome Statute treaty, and the UN’s secretary-general accepted the joinder. In 2018, Palestine used the Rome Statute’s processes to refer crimes to the ICC for prosecution. Palestine alleged that Israel had committed these crimes against Palestinians in “the occupied Palestinian territory” since 2014. Israel was not a member of the Rome Statute. Palestine’s crime referral was assigned to the ICC’s pretrial chambers to determine whether the ICC had jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the criminal allegations.