Pursuing International Criminal Justice, the ICC, and Palestine

The aim here is to trace some of the arguments that have been offered regarding what role (if any) recourse to the ICC might play in the pursuit of a decolonised Palestine. Since 2009, there has been a clear shift within the upper echelons of the Palestinian political elite towards embracing the potentialities of the ICC as a way of spotlighting widespread Israeli state-sponsored human rights abuses through pursuit of prosecutions against individuals representing the Israeli state. Like all persons who have suffered the violent scourge of colonialism, international law has operated against the Palestinians as a method of violation and denial, rather than emancipation and justice; ensuring the maintenance of a permanent state of exception, rather than providing for a legal framework that advances redress and alleviation. Therefore, in following this logic, pursuing elite, top-down interventions will always be in some ways unsatisfactory and can never act as a ‘justice’ panacea.