Little Comfort Taken as Palestine Formally Joins the International Criminal Court

On Wednesday morning, a low-key ceremony in The Hague marked Palestine officially becoming the 123rd state to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), after signing the Rome Statute on December 31. Palestinian officials have lauded the move as an important milestone in their strategy of "internationalization," a form of non-violent political resistance against Israel's occupation.

"Today is a historic day in the struggle for justice, freedom, and peace for our people and all those seeking justice worldwide," said chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, in a statement released Wednesday.

Yet in the streets of the West Bank, celebrations were nowhere to be seen, and many said they felt accession to the court will do little to change their beleaguered circumstances.

"When I can put kids to bed at night without Israel's soldiers walking on our land, when I can pay to put them through college, then we can have a party," 47-year-old restaurant owner Zahid told VICE News while grimly wiping down a table without raising his head. "But nothing has changed for me because of this. Today is the same as tomorrow, yesterday and the day before. Nothing here changes."

The Palestinian Authority's (PA) ratification of the ICC's Rome Statute in December led the court's prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to open a preliminary inquiry into possible war crimes on Palestinian territories. But court observers warn that the path ahead to any form of "justice" will likely be long, difficult, and fraught with legal and political obstacles.

Among the hurdles is reform of its own political system, Middle East and North Africa Program Associate at the Coalition for the ICC Yazen Abed told VICE News.

"As a party to the Rome Statute, Palestine does have obligations: Palestine should implement the Rome Statute into its domestic law and cooperation with the ICC and its decisions," he said.

The formal accession could also open Palestinians up to war crime charges being brought against them. A recent report by Amnesty International indicated that this was certainly a possibility for Hamas as well as Israel, in relation to the bloody seven-week war in Gaza this summer.

The official start of Palestine's ICC membership today also opens the door to the PA bringing its own specific cases. For instance, regarding settlement development beyond 1967 lines, or alleged war crimes committed in Gaza during Operation Protective Edge last summer. But while the PA says it has begun preparing paperwork for such an eventuality, there is more than a hint of reticence about actually bringing them.

In his office in downtown Ramallah, Xavier Abu Eid, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization, admitted it was "unlikely" that new cases would be brought anytime soon.

"We're ready to cooperate with any request for information the court brings," he told VICE News. "But bringing fresh cases right now is not compatible with playing the long-game."

Related: Fallout in Gaza: Six Months On

This hesitation is unsurprising. Following the late December ratification of the ICC's Rome Treaty, Israel retaliated by cutting off the tax and revenue funds it collects on behalf of the PA. The withheld payments, totaling more than $500 million in three months, quickly brought the economy to its knees; public sector wages were slashed by 40 percent, and the PA, nearly bankrupt, was forced to default to an emergency budget after maxing out on its loan potential.

On Friday, Israel's funding freeze appeared to have been at least partially lifted, following an announcement by the government that it would pay the outstanding amount after deducting for unpaid services. However, nearly a week later, the money has not yet been released, nor has Israel confirmed that it will be resuming normal payments in the months ahead, leaving the potential for the cut-off to be reinstated if the PA does not toe the line.

Filing further court papers could also have far-reaching consequences in the international arena. Nerves in Washington and Jerusalem are already frayed, and both the US and Israel opposed Palestine joining the ICC in the first place; the US claimed Palestine wasn't a state, and therefore couldn't accede.

Since then, relations between Israel and the US, usually staunch allies, have deteriorated to an unprecedented level, following the controversial re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a fourth-term in office on the back of a election campaign branded "divisive" by the White House. As a result, the US has signaled that it may be ready to break its decades-old strategy of supporting Israel at whatever cost, and claims it will "re-evaluate" its approach to their special relationship.

Yet it remains to be seen whether the White House's words will be translated into meaningful actions. With a stateside election looming just 18 months away, the PA must think beyond the current administration; US appropriations legislation has language written into it that allows an annual $400 million of aid to be cut off should the it "initiate an ICC judicially authorized investigation or actively support such an investigation, that subjects Israeli nationals to an investigation for alleged crimes against Palestinians."

The US and Israel are not the only concerns for Palestinians, however. In a classic catch-22, while inaction in the court bodes well for the PA keeping its financial lines open, failing to act risks exacerbating its problems on a domestic front — where its perceived inaction against Israel's occupation is fueling rising public discontent.

In al-Amari, a Ramallah refugee camp that long ago metamorphosed into a permanent concrete ghetto, Ahmad Hussein flashes a wide smile as he tells how he spent more then two decades in prison for murdering men suspected of collaborating with the Israeli security forces during the first Intifada.

"I killed three, not one," he says, proudly correcting an interlocutor. But in the camp, Hussein is not seen as a criminal, but as an increasingly appealing alternative to the lackluster politics of the PA.

Earlier this month, Hussein won a standoff against Tareq Abbas, the son of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, to head the administrative board of the Amari camp's youth sports center. In the West Bank, where presidential elections have not been held since 2005 and parliamentary elections since 2006, localized ballots such as this have taken on an intense political significance, and his victory against the president's son is telling.

"This result shows a total rejection of Abbas, his nepotism, and his family. Nothing has been achieved here. There is no political vision," says Hussein, dismissing the PA's so-called strategy of "internationalization" and non-violent resistance with a slam of his hand on the counter. "Tell me how people are to feed and clothe their children? Tell me that the occupation is about to end. People here are frustrated to the point of explosion. The fire can start any moment, it only takes one match."

Over the last two months the PA — which threatened to end its longstanding temporary security coordination with Israel during the funding freeze, though did not do so — has arrested more than 100 people. Mainly the detainees are associated with its biggest political rival, Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip. But also in a few cases, such as Hussein's, it has issued orders for the detention of those affiliated with more radical elements of its own Fatah party.

Related: Religious War Has Moved to the Forefront of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Indeed, one of the central complaints both in Amari, and among Palestinians more generally, is a lack of political freedom afforded to them by their own leaders. The latest monthly data released by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) showed 77 percent of Palestinians saw the PA institutions, as corrupt, and only 23 percent believed there was press freedom in the West Bank.

"It's a double occupation. We can't even talk politics anymore without fear of being arrested," says 19-year-old Hassan, a resident of Amari. "The PA is in the pockets of the Israelis, everyone knows this. Being arrested by the PA is the same as being arrested by Israel. Being in a PA prison is the same as being in an Israeli prison. They talk that they will do this or that against Israel, but then why do they still work together?"

With the economy still reeling from the cut-off, Hassan and his friends now spend most of their day loitering outside a café in the overcrowded and impoverished camp's main street, where the smell of poor sewage systems permeates the air.

"What we need is action. If we don't see action, then we'll take it ourselves. Here in Amari you can feel the anger in the air. We are desperate, we don't have anything to lose," 22-year-old Ahmed, who is unemployed, told VICE News.

According to last month's data from the PSR, 86 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank think that the PA should push forward with a case against settlements at the ICC now that it has formally joined, even though only 42 percent believe it will reduce or stop their development.

"The atmosphere [in the West Bank] right now is very negative, very frustrated, very pessimistic… the gap between the [Palestinian] administration and the public has grown, that is a clear fact, and the new Israeli government is not seen as a partner for peace," Ghassan Khatib, a political science lecturer at Birzeit University in Ramallah told VICE News.

"A succession of right-wing governments in Israel has tightened the screws on the PA," he added. "Whilst the ICC is a positive step, domestically their room for maneuvering is dwindling. People are very disillusioned with promises of change."

VICE News' Samuel Oakford contributed to this report. 

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Follow Samuel Oakford on Twitter: @SamuelOakford