After the February decision by its judges that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had jurisdiction over crimes in the Palestinian territories, prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced this week that her office would open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes by Israeli troops and government officials and Palestinian armed groups from 2014 onwards.

To pick through the announcement and its implications Janet and Stephanie talked to law professor Chantal Meloni who represents Palestinians from Gaza as victims – together with Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza – at the ICC.

Bensouda’s statement which really stressed a non-partisan approach and referred throughout to Palestinian and Israeli victims really struck Yael Ronen, professor of law at the Academic Center for Science and Law at Hod Hasharon, and a research fellow at the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

And we asked Sharon Weill, assistant professor of international law at the American University of Paris and Sciences Po, Paris, about her take on some of the arguments Israel uses to reject the ICC’s probe.