Chief Justice Nawaf Salam reads the ruling of the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice, or World Courtroom, in The Hague, Netherlands, July 19, 2024, because the United Nations’ high courtroom points a nonbinding advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s 57-year occupation of land searched for a Palestinian state. | Photograph credit score: AP
On July 19, the UN’s highest courtroom declared that Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory was “unlawful” and should finish as quickly as doable.
The advisory opinion by the Hague-based Worldwide Courtroom of Justice isn’t binding however comes amid rising concern over Israel’s battle towards Hamas, sparked by the group’s brutal assaults on Oct. 7.
“The courtroom has decided that Israel’s continued presence within the Palestinian territories is illegal,” ICJ presiding decide Nawaf Salam stated, including: “Israel should finish the occupation as rapidly as doable.”
The ICJ added that Israel had “an obligation to stop instantly all new settlement actions and to evacuate all settlers” from the occupied lands.
Israel’s insurance policies and practices, together with the development of latest settlements and the continued upkeep of a wall between the territories, “quantity to the annexation of enormous components” of the occupied territory, he stated.
Netanyahu criticises ruling as a ‘determination of lies’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated the courtroom had made a “determination of lies.”
“The Jewish persons are not the occupiers of their very own land, nor of our everlasting capital, Jerusalem, nor of our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Financial institution),” Netanyahu stated in a press release.
“No determination of lies in The Hague will distort this historic reality and, equally, the legality of Israeli settlements in all components of our homeland can’t be questioned.”
One other high-profile case South Africa has introduced earlier than the courtroom alleges that Israel dedicated genocidal acts throughout its offensive in Gaza.
‘Excessive hazard’
In late 2022, the UN Common Meeting requested the ICJ to concern an “advisory opinion” on the “authorized penalties arising from Israel’s insurance policies and practices within the Occupied Palestinian Territory, together with East Jerusalem.”
The ICJ held a week-long session in February to listen to submissions from international locations following the request, which was supported by a majority of nations within the Meeting.
In the course of the hearings, most audio system referred to as on Israel to finish its 57-year occupation, warning {that a} extended occupation posed an “excessive hazard” to stability within the Center East and elsewhere.
However the US stated Israel shouldn’t be legally compelled to withdraw with out regard to its “very actual safety wants”.
Israel didn’t take part within the oral hearings.
As a substitute, he submitted a written submission during which he referred to as the questions put to the courtroom “prejudicial” and “biased.”
‘Steady rape’
The Common Meeting requested the ICJ to look at two points.
First, the courtroom ought to look at the authorized penalties of what the UN referred to as “Israel’s continued violation of the Palestinian folks’s proper to self-determination.”
These are the “extended occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” and “measures aimed toward altering the demographic composition, character and standing of the Holy Metropolis of Jerusalem.”
In June 1967, Israel crushed a few of its Arab neighbors in a six-day battle, seizing the West Financial institution, together with East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.
Israel then started to colonize the 70,000 sq. kilometers of confiscated Arab territory.
The UN later declared the occupation of Palestinian territory unlawful and Cairo regained the Sinai beneath its 1979 peace settlement with Israel.
Non-binding opinion
The ICJ was additionally requested to look at the results of what it described as “Israel’s adoption of discriminatory legal guidelines and associated measures.”
Secondly, the ICJ was requested to advise on how Israel’s actions “have an effect on the authorized standing of the occupation” and what the results are for the UN and different international locations.
The ICJ resolves disputes between states. Its judgments are often binding, however it has few technique of implementing them.
On this case, nevertheless, the opinion isn’t binding, though most advisory opinions do in reality apply.
The ICJ has beforehand issued advisory opinions on the legality of Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia and on South Africa’s occupation of Namibia in the course of the apartheid regime.
In 2004, it additionally issued an opinion declaring that components of the wall erected by Israel within the occupied Palestinian territory had been unlawful and ought to be torn down.
Israel has not complied with the ICJ ruling and has resisted calls to construct the barrier alongside the Inexperienced Line, the 1949 Armistice Line established after the top of combating that accompanied Israel’s institution of the barrier a 12 months earlier.
