Amman - At least 37 Jordanian lawmakers Thursday requested the lower house of parliament to commence legal action against Israeli leaders as "war criminals who practiced genocide" against Gazans in the three-week operation that ended Sunday.

"We have three options for filing suits against Israeli leaders," Chairman of the Legal Committee at the lower house of parliament Mubarak Abu Yameen told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

He said the three options were suing Israeli leaders at the International Criminal Court (ICC), at at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or at tribunals of countries which claim universal jurisdiction such as Britain, Belgium or Spain.

"To be frank, the first two options stand to hit serious legal and political snags which could turn out to be insurmountable," Abu Yameen said.

"Jordan and Israel are signatories to the 1998 protocol that set up the ICC but Israel failed to ratify it. This means that suing it at the ICC is impossible legally but it could be accompanied by a media campaign injurious to the Jewish state," he added.

Abu Yameen, a pro-government lawmaker, raised the possibility of Jordan asking the UN Security Council to support a legal action against Israel at the ICC under the Chapter 7 of the UN charter.

"This plunges us into the political game," he said, alluding to the possible use of the veto power by the US to kill any such motion.

Abu Yameen said that his panel was coordinating the moves to sue Israeli leaders with local, Arab and international civil societies and legal organizations.

Head of the Jordan Bar Association (JBA) Saleh al-Armouti was in Cairo on Thursday for talks with the Arab Lawyers Federation, a JBA spokesman said.

Abdul Azeem Moghrabi, Deputy Secretary General of the Arab Lawyers Federation, said that the organization had "completed the collection and classification of evidence ... sufficient for charging Israeli leaders with war crimes." (dpa)