Israel’s 57-year-old occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Financial institution is against the law beneath worldwide regulation, the UN’s highest court docket mentioned on Friday, casting the Jewish state’s conduct in direction of Palestinians dwelling beneath its navy’s management as a decades-long violation of their rights.
In a sequence of findings, the ICJ dominated that just about each facet of Israeli coverage within the West Financial institution was unlawful, from the creation and assist of sprawling settlements to the applying of discriminatory legal guidelines and of Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
“Israel’s continued presence within the occupied territories is illegal,” mentioned the opinion backed by a majority of judges on the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice. “It must be delivered to an finish as quickly as doable.”
It mentioned Israel ought to dismantle its settlement infrastructure and “evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, a core demand of Palestinians who search to ascertain their nation on the identical land.
The opinion, in response to a 2022 request by the UN Normal Meeting, discovered that not one of the authorized structure of Israel’s occupation complied with worldwide humanitarian regulation, in a damning — if toothless — indictment of how Israel has interpreted its obligations in direction of the Palestinians beneath the Geneva Conventions.
Whereas dealing a diplomatic blow to Israel, the advisory opinion to the Normal Meeting may have little quick affect provided that it’s non-binding. Israel is already ignoring one from 2004 that declared its separation barrier — which took swaths of the West Financial institution into Israeli territory — to be unlawful.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned on X: “The Jewish persons are not occupiers in their very own land — neither in our everlasting capital Jerusalem nor within the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria.
“No false resolution in The Hague will distort this historic reality, and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all of the territories of our homeland can’t be disputed.”
The West Financial institution of the Jordan river is called Judea and Samaria by Israelis, a reference to its biblical identify.
Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, a champion of its settlements coverage within the West Financial institution, mentioned on X that the very best response to the ICJ could be to annex all the territory. “The reply to The Hague — sovereignty now,” he wrote.
Israel didn’t absolutely signify itself on the hearings. Its ambassador to the Netherlands, the place the hearings happened in The Hague, wrote final yr that the nation declined to reply questions that “mirrored a extreme injustice and imbalance”.
The Palestinian Authority, which has restricted self-rule in elements of the West Financial institution, welcomed the ruling as “well timed and sorely wanted”.
“The Palestinian individuals have endured insufferable struggling and injustice for many years,” mentioned the PA’s ministry of international affairs. “Israel’s colonial, expansionist and genocidal insurance policies are on full, horrific show earlier than the world.”
All components of the ICJ’s findings have been backed by a majority of the court docket’s 15 judges, although the precise quantity assorted for various rulings.
The advisory opinion, requested earlier than the conflict between Israel and Hamas was triggered by the Palestinian militant group’s October 7 assault, is certainly one of three separate worldwide authorized challenges that Israel is combating.
South Africa has alleged in a distinct case, additionally earlier than the ICJ, that Israel is engaged in a genocide in Gaza, the place virtually 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, in keeping with officers within the strip.
Individually, prosecutors on the Worldwide Legal Courtroom have requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister over the conflict in Gaza, together with on allegations of utilizing hunger as a weapon of conflict and “deliberately directing assaults towards a civilian inhabitants”.
Taken collectively, the three authorized actions signify the gravest latest problem to Israel’s declare that its navy acts inside the restraints of the legal guidelines of conflict, and that its long-running occupation of the Palestinian territories is justified by safety issues.
The ICJ rejected the thrust of these arguments, saying that “the sustained abuse by Israel of its place as an occupying energy . . . violates elementary ideas of worldwide regulation and renders Israel’s presence within the Occupied Palestinian Territory illegal”.
Israel occupied the West Financial institution, together with East Jerusalem, after wresting management of the territories from Jordan within the 1967 conflict. It quickly signalled approval for UN decision 242, which provided it the potential for peace with its neigbouring states in alternate for withdrawal from “territories occupied within the latest battle”.
With Egypt and Jordan, Israel was capable of obtain that compromise, dubbed “land for peace”. Nevertheless, when it got here to the Palestinian territories, it annexed East Jerusalem, in a transfer rejected by the worldwide neighborhood, and has since constructed greater than 100 settlements within the West Financial institution and confiscated tens of 1000’s of acres of land.
The Jewish inhabitants of the realm now exceeds 700,000, dwelling in walled-off settlements nestled inside and close to a Palestinian inhabitants of about 3mn.
The court docket mentioned this switch of Israeli residents into the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel’s monetary and navy assist of the settlements was additionally inconsistent with worldwide regulation and the Geneva Conventions.
In recent times, Israeli and worldwide human rights teams say the Israeli navy’s administration of the West Financial institution has crossed the brink into apartheid.
They’ve cited the operation of separate courts for Israelis and Palestinians, who’re tried beneath navy regulation with a conviction price of greater than 99 per cent, and the imposition of a residence allow system and segregated roads for Palestinians solely.
The court docket mentioned these insurance policies have been in breach of a global settlement towards racial segregation and apartheid, known as the Worldwide Conference on the Elimination of All Types of Racial Discrimination.