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Arab League chief calls for special court to try Israel

Egypt

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi has called for a special criminal court to be set up for Israel.

Delegates at the 22-member Arab League meeting held in Cairo are expected to pass a resolution denouncing Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s controversial statement on Sunday that the occupied Golan Heights would remain Israeli “forever”,
news website Naharnet reports.

Israel had occupied the Golan region during the 1967 Middle East war with Syria, Egypt and Jordan, and annexed it in 1981.

Netanyahu had organised a meeting in the Golan heights where he made the pledge amid fears Israel could come under pressure to return the area as part of a future peace deal for its war-torn neighbour.

However, the Arab League chief said Israel was acting like “a country that is above the law and accountability.”

He demanded for “ a special criminal court for the Palestinian cause” along the lines of international tribunals set up to try ex-officials of “the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Sierra Leone”.

“I propose that the Arab League study the request to create a special international criminal tribunal on crimes against the Palestinians, along the lines of international tribunals set up to try ex-officials of the Yugoslavia, the Rwanda, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, to look into the crimes Israel has committed repeatedly,” he said.

The Arab League’s monitoring committee is expected to meet on October 4 to discuss whether the direct Israel-Palestinian peace talks should continue after Israel’s temporary construction freeze in the West Bank comes to an end.

The Palestinian leader has in the last few weeks declared that he would refuse to continue the talks unless Israel expired its construction freeze.

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