Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory ‘illegal’—UN top court
THE HAGUE—The UN’s top court, in a sweeping opinion on Friday, said that Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory was “illegal” and needed to end as soon as possible.
The advisory opinion by The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) was immediately slammed as a “decision of lies” by Israel, but welcomed by the Palestinian presidency, which called it “historic.”
The ICJ’s statement, called an “advisory opinion,” is not binding, but it comes amid mounting concern over the death toll and destruction in Israel’s war against Hamas sparked by the group’s brutal Oct. 7 attacks.
It is also likely to increase diplomatic pressure on Israel, whose lawmakers on Thursday voted to oppose a Palestinian state, calling it an “existential threat.”
In The Hague, ICJ presiding judge Nawaf Salam said: “The court has found … that Israel’s continued presence in the Palestinian Territories is illegal.”
‘As rapidly as possible’
Israel is “under the obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence as rapidly as possible,” the judge said in its finding, read at the Peace Palace, seat of the ICJ.
The ICJ added that Israel was “under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers” from occupied land.
Israel’s policies and practices, including the maintenance of a wall between the territories, “amount to annexation of large parts” of the occupied territory, the court said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the ICJ’s opinion as a “decision of lies.”
“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land—not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria” (the occupied West Bank), Netanyahu said in a statement.
Palestinian foreign minister Riyad Al-Maliki called it a “watershed moment.”
Genocidal acts
A separate, high-profile case that South Africa has brought before the court alleges that Israel has committed genocidal acts during its Gaza offensive.
South Africa, in a statement, called upon the international community “to bring an immediate end to the occupation and the gross violations of international humanitarian and human rights law being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people.”
In late 2022, the UN’s General Assembly asked the ICJ to give an “advisory opinion” on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”
