According to Baker, who served as Israel’s ambassador to Canada and as legal adviser to the State Department, “this is a pre-trial answer from the court regarding the plaintiff’s question about jurisdiction in Judea and Samaria and Gaza. This is in light of the issue of whether there is a sovereign Palestinian state or not.”
Baker, who serves as director of the Institute for Public Diplomacy at the Jerusalem Center for Public and State Affairs, explained that it would take a long time, if at all, for such a decision to be made. Only then may Israeli officials be contacted to testify or respond to the allegations.
According to Baker, “by any international standard – the authority is not a sovereign territory entity, and therefore, even under ICC law, cannot be under the jurisdiction of the court.” He argues that the irony in the legal acrobatics perpetrated by the plaintiff in its foundation is political and stems from a prejudice that elements of statehood and sovereignty should be attributed to the PA.
“The International Court of Justice, which is supposed to be an apolitical legal body, free from pressure and political influence, has allowed itself to become in this decision another anti-Israel body available to those seeking to challenge the legitimacy of the State of Israel,” the expert said.
Unfortunately, Baker argued, the decision not only irreversibly undermines the integrity and credibility of the ICC, but also has the potential to undermine and thwart the political process in the Middle East.
“It is both tragic and ironic that the State of Israel, one of the founding fathers of the vision of establishing an international tribunal as an independent body after the horrors of the Holocaust, has now become the target of that tribunal on the basis of Palestinian political manipulation,” Baker added.