THE HAGUE: On Friday, the UN’s highest court said that Israel’s long-running occupation of Palestinian territory was “illegal” and that it had to end right away.
The Palestinian leadership praised the International Court of Justice’s ruling right away, calling it “historic,” but Israel criticized it as a “decision of lies.” The Hague is home to the court.
The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) “advisory opinion” is non-binding, but it comes amid growing anxiety over the number of casualties and damage in Israel’s battle against Hamas, which was launched by the group’s attack on October 7. In 2022, the UN General Assembly asked about the legal ramifications of Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement, and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.” This answer was given in response.
Diplomatic pressure on Israel is expected to rise in response to the ICJ’s ruling; Israeli MPs decided on Thursday to oppose a Palestinian state, citing it as a “existential threat.”
While Tel Aviv attacks the discovery as a “decision of lies,” Palestinians hail it as a “historic” and “watershed moment.”
“The court has found that Israel’s continued presence in the Palestinian Territories is illegal,” ICJ presiding judge Nawaf Salam declared in The Hague.
At the ICJ’s Peace Palace, the judge declared that Israel was “under the obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence as rapidly as possible.”
Israel was “under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers” from occupied land, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) continued.
The court declared that Israel’s actions, such as the construction of additional settlements and the upkeep of a wall dividing the territories, “amount to annexation of large parts” of the occupied land.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, denounced the ICJ’s ruling as a “decision of lies.”
Netanyahu declared in a statement that “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).
“This historical truth cannot be distorted by a decision made in The Hague, and there is no disputing the legality of Israeli settlements throughout our country.”
A “watershed moment,” according to Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki, was the ICJ’s decision.
Al-Maliki told reporters outside the courtroom, “The Palestinian people have endured unbearable suffering and injustice for decades.”
According to a different, well-known lawsuit that South Africa filed with the court, Israel committed genocide while launching its Gaza offensive.
