The Palestinian Declaration and the Jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court

Abstract

The Declaration made by the Palestinian Authority on 21 January 2009 whereby Palestine agrees to the exercise of jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court for crimes committed in Palestinian territory since 1 July 2002, raises several interesting issues of international law. However, according to the author, the Court must not engage with all such issues, which are indeed extremely broad in scope; in particular, the Court should refrain from pronouncing <it>in abstracto</it> on the issue of whether or not Palestine is a state under international law. On the contrary, the Court should resort to a functional interpretation of the ICC Statute and limit itself to ascertaining whether the conditions required for the Court to exercise jurisdiction are met in the present case. The author argues that these conditions are indeed met.