ABSTRACT
On 3 April 2012, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued a statement declining jurisdiction over Palestine.1 The decision referred to the continued lack of clarity over the status of Palestine on the international legal stage. Although long contested in terms of rhetoric and politics, Palestine’s status had lain dormant from the perspective of international law since the United Nations’ 1947 Partition Resolution;2 some significant attention following the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988 notwithstanding.3 From 2002, the primary vehicle for the resolution of the status of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 became the ‘Quartet’, comprised of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the UN. Working with the respective authorities representing Israelis and Palestinians, their shared goal was the resolution of the conflict through the establishment and recognition of ‘an independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state, living in peace and security alongside Israel’.4
