AMMAN: Jordan’s largest political party, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), yesterday straongly criticized the lower house of Parliament for its failure to submit a memorandum on Thursday to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for suing Israeli leaders on charges of committing war crimes.
“We are displeased over the abrupt decision to go back on the idea which was unanimously approved by the House of Representatives last month,” head of the IAF parliamentary bloc Hamzeh Mansour said.
“I don’t rule out the possibility of Jordan coming under pressure particularly in the light of threats against the country by leaders of the Zionist entity,” he added.
The chairman of the Parliamentary Legal Committee, Mubarak Abu Yameen, was supposed to travel on Thursday to The Hague for a meeting with the ICC Public Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to submit a memorandum setting forth in detail the crimes against humanity which were allegedly committed by Israeli leaders during the 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip.
The document was drafted after lengthy consultations with legal experts and professors of international law at Jordanian universities, parliamentary sources said.
Abu Yameen, who said on Wednesday that his trip to The Hague was deferred to another date, was not available on Saturday to comment.
Mansour and local columnists dropped strong hints that the cancellation of the trip, or at the best its deferment, came in response to Israeli pressures.
Israeli press reports said earlier this week that the Israeli government had urged Amman to cancel the move because suing Israeli leaders “ran counter to the provisions of the peace treaty” which the two countries signed in 1994.
