BOGOTA: Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki on Saturday said his government would soon try to haul Israelis before the International Criminal Court for war crimes.

“We will go to the ICJ, and put our signature on it. Very soon we will be a (sovereign) state. That is enough for the court to start an investigation,” Malki, on a visit to Bogota, said.

Al-Malki, who attended to inauguration Thursday of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, said “before coming here, I was in the Hague.

“And I asked the ICJ to start an official investigation, to see if what Israel has done in the past 33 days reaches the level of war crimes,” Malki told a briefing in Bogota.

The world’s permanent war crimes court in The Hague declined two years ago to investigate allegations against the Israeli military in 2008-2009, citing the uncertain legal status of the Palestinian Authority.

A lot has changed since then.

The legal groundwork for such a move was laid in November 2012 when the 193-member UN General Assembly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine by upgrading the Palestinian Authority’s observer status to “non-member state.”

“If Palestine applies it will be admitted to the ICC,” John Dugard, international law professor and a former UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, said.

“The UN has spoken and it has recognized the state of Palestine and it is now for the ICC to admit Palestine. I cannot see how that cwan be resisted.”

Dugard said the Palestinians could then ask prosecutors to investigate alleged crimes in July and August in Gaza, but also the legality of Israeli West Bank settlements.

“The settlements are an ongoing crime and it is quite clear that the settlements constitute a war crime under the Rome Statute and that is what Israel is desperately worried about,” Dugan said.