Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi says the Israeli aggression against Gaza, which claimed the lives of nearly 15,000 people over 49 days, qualifies as genocide as members of the Arab country’s lower house of parliament embark on a review of peace accords with the Tel Aviv regime.
Safadi said on Monday that what has happened in Gaza since early October is within the realm of the legal definition of genocide.
The minister was speaking in a news conference at the Union for the Mediterranean summit in Spain’s Barcelona.
Jordan borders the occupied West Bank in Palestine and is home to a large community of refugees who have been displaced by Israel’s decades of aggression against the Palestinians.
The Arab country has a peace treaty with Israel which it signed in 1994 amid efforts at the time by the US to work out a so-called two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict, an initiative which has failed to bear fruit after nearly three decades.
That comes as members of Jordan’s lower house’s legal committee met with international and constitutional law experts on Sunday to scrutinize the peace accords with Israel, the Jordan News Agency reported.
The meeting was aimed at investigating the possibility of prosecuting Israeli officials in the International Criminal Court for crimes they have committed in Gaza, said the report.
Committee members carried out in-depth reviews of the accords, said the report, adding that the Jordanian MPs were also in search of legal frameworks to sue Israeli settlers for their acts of violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
The committee is expected to present recommendations to the Jordanian parliament in the near future, said the report.
