The Palestinian legal team now making their case at the International Criminal Court (ICC) avoided the question on Thursday of whether or not the Palestinian Authority (PA) is upholding the agreements of the Oslo Peace Accords.The Palestinian legal team said that while this is the position of the PA, this position should be understood to exist in the political realm and not in the legal sense of the procedure taking place in court.The legal team also asked to speed up the legal process seeing as only three and a half weeks remain until the annexation as part of the Deal of the Century, proposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump.PA President Mahmoud Abbas said that the PA’s stance is that it is exempt from following through on any agreements it made with Israel and the US during the Accords after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plans to annex the Jordan Valley and 30% of the West Bank on July 1.
Yet if the PA nullifies the Oslo Peace Accords, it may lose its right to appeal to the ICC. The solution, reported Haaretz on Friday, was to dodge the bullet.
The Israeli argument is that even if the PA sticks to the Oslo Peace agreements, they never contained the notion the PA has control over Area C or Israeli citizens. Therefore, the PA does not have the jurisdiction to appeal to the court.