By Mustafa Caglayan
NEW YORK
Palestine's UN envoy said Friday that he formally delivered to the UN the application to join the International Criminal Court, or the ICC.
"We are honored that we are to be the 123rd state party to join the ICC, which will become effective about 60 days from now," Riyad Mansour told reporters after a meeting with UN legal affairs chief Stephen Mathias.
The move comes two days after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas signed the Rome Statute – the founding treaty of the ICC – along with 20 international agreements and organizations.
Mansour said joining the Hague-based court is a "peaceful, legal option to seek justice."
The membership bid follows the UN Security Council's rejection of a Palestinian draft resolution calling for a three-year deadline for ending Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land.
Full membership would allow the Palestinians to bring lawsuits against Israel for war crimes.
The International Criminal Court was established in 1998 as a court of last resort to prosecute the most heinous offenses in cases where national courts fail.
Mansour said the Rome Statute considers illegal settlement activities as a war crime, referring to Israeli settlement-building in the occupied West Bank.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. In a move never recognized by the international community, it annexed the city of Jerusalem --sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians -- in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the Jewish state.
International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and deems the building of Jewish settlements on the land to be illegal.
"We will be seeking justice through this stipulation in the Rome Statute, and other cases will be referred to the ICC as our leadership see fit as we move forward," Mansour said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday urged the court to reject Palestine's application on the grounds that the Palestinian Authority is not a state.
Mansour, however, said, "What is joining the ICC is a state, and that state is the state of Palestine."
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