With the Israeli police killing this morning a disabled Palestinian man in occupied East Jerusalem, a Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to fulfill its mandate regarding Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
Israeli police shot dead this morning Iyad Khairi Hallak, 32, a Palestinian resident of occupied East Jerusalem with disabilities alleging they suspected he had a gun. However, police later said the man was unarmed.
Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the PLO’s Executive Committee, said in tweet that the killing of Hallak is “a new crime that will be met with impunity unless the world stops treating Israel as a state above the law and the International Criminal Court fulfills its mandate.”
The ICC Prosecutor said in December that she has decided to start an investigation into the situation of Palestine after concluding that Israel could have committee war crimes against the Palestinians under its occupation.
Hallak was the second Palestinian shot dead by Israeli forces in the occupied territories in less than 24 hours. Soldiers killed the night before a 37-year-old father of five near Ramallah claiming he attempted to hit them with his car, an allegation strongly denied by the man’s family who said he was on his way to pick up his family.
