Hague.-In a new setback for the Israeli government from global justice, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on Friday that Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories is “illegal” and urged it to end “as quickly as possible.”
The UN’s top judicial body, whose rulings are not binding, has ruled on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967, at a time of growing tension following more than nine months of conflict in Gaza.
The court “determined that Israel’s continued presence in the Palestinian Territories is illegal,” said Nawaf Salam, the presiding judge, after an unprecedented case in which 50 countries provided testimony.
“The State of Israel has an obligation to end its illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as soon as possible,” the judge said.
The ICJ took up the case after the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on 31 December 2022 requesting its “advisory opinion” on the “legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”
The ICJ’s advisory opinions could increase international pressure on Israel, which has been at war since October 7 against the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the statement a “lie.”
“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, nor in our eternal capital, Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria,” a designation that corresponds to the territory of the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu said in a statement.
The prime minister, who is under international pressure and is travelling to the United States, his main ally, next week, said that “no decision” based on lies in The Hague “will distort this historical truth.”
The Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, welcomed the court’s “historic” decision.
“The presidency welcomes the decision of the International Court of Justice, considers it a historic decision and demands that Israel be forced to implement it,” Abbas said in a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency.
Palestinian Authority Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Varsen Aghabekian Shahin said: “This is a great day for Palestine, historically and legally.”
In June 1967, Israel fought the Six-Day War, wresting control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai from Egypt.
Israel then began to occupy the 70,000 km2 of Arab territories it had seized. The UN declared the occupation illegal.
At the February hearings, most of those speaking called on Israel to end its post-Six-Day War occupation, with some warning that a prolonged occupation poses an “extreme danger” to stability in the Middle East and beyond.
Palestinian representatives accused the Israelis of running a system of “colonialism and apartheid” and urged the judges to demand an end to the occupation “immediately, completely and unconditionally.”
South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands told judges that Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories are an “even more extreme” form of apartheid than his country experienced before 1994.
But Washington has come to the defence of its ally, saying Israel should not be legally forced to withdraw, regardless of its “very real security needs”.
Israel did not participate in the hearings, but submitted a written submission in which it described the questions put to the court as “prejudicial” and “biased.” Clarín.
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2024-07-23 23:10:45
