The International Court of Justice announced a landmark ruling on July 19 which found that Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestinian territories is a violation of international law. The nonbinding advisory opinion issued by the court’s 15-judge panel stated Israel should stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and end its “illegal” occupation of those areas and the Gaza Strip as rapidly as possible.
The ICJ, based at The Hague in the Netherlands, examined the issue after the U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 2022 requesting the Court to give an advisory opinion on the legality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. Since 1967, Israel has built 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the court’s ruling, maintaining that “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land…” Netanyahu, who is scheduled to addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress on July 24, will face tens of thousands of protesters who accuse his government of committing genocide in Israel’s 9-month war in Gaza that has killed an estimated 39,000 Palestinians. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Michael Lynk, associate professor of law at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, and former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories from 2016 to 2022. Here he assesses the likely impact of the International Court of Justice ruling.
MICHAEL LYNK: This ruling has taken us to another level. It’s been long established by a prior ruling 20 years ago by the International Court of Justice, by U.N. resolutions from the Security Council and the General Assembly, and by virtually a wall-to-wall opinion by countries around the world that there were many features of the 57-year-old Israeli occupation that were illegal.
The formal annexation of East Jerusalem was deemed to be illegal. The Israeli settlements are have been deemed to be illegal. The construction of a wall 700 km going through the occupied West Bank has been deemed to be illegal. And the many violations of Palestinian human rights have been found to be a violation of international human rights law.
But what hadn’t been established until Friday with this ruling was whether the occupation itself had become illegal. And that’s exactly what the court wound up stating in its advisory opinion to the General Assembly that because Israel had annexed land contrary to very well-established international law with regards to the responsibilities of occupying powers, because Israel had been practicing discrimination and particularly apartheid, and because Israel had been denying Palestinians self-determination, these were the basis for the court finding that the occupation had now crossed the bright red line into illegality.
And it said that the occupation had to end completely, i.e. going back to the 1967 June borders and that Israel had to end the occupation — in the words of the court — as rapidly as possible. The court said it would leave the modalities of how to pressure Israel to obey this direction to the General Assembly and the Security Council.
But we have a decision with astounding clarity as to what the law is regarding this occupation.
SCOTT HARRIS: Professor Lynk, given that Israel doesn’t recognize the jurisdiction of the court here and are likely to ignore this ruling, what’s the possible impact this ruling may have on Israel’s occupation in the future?
Another question here is, what is the responsibility and obligation of Israeli allies such as the United States and Western European nations here given the very sweeping nature of this court ruling?
MICHAEL LYNK: Both good questions. With respect to the impact of the ruling, this will be up to the General Assembly to make decisions. We know that there’s unlikely to be any movement coming from the Security Council because of the United States veto. And indeed, the State Department said over the weekend that it was disappointed in the ruling.
It stated that the breadth of the court’s opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict and said that it’s going to strongly discourage parties from using the court’s opinion as a pretext for further unilateral actions that deepen divisions, or for supplanting a negotiated two-state solution.
I thought it was astonishing coming from the United States, particularly under a Democratic administration, when it was the United States, actually, that created and was instrumental through the 1940s to the 1960s in establishing much of the basis for our international legal system that we know today, and particularly for our international human rights legal system that has only grown since the 1960s.
But the impact, among others and particularly in Europe, is what I’m going to be watching for. There are many countries, I think, that are beginning to shift their position towards Israel in the wake of the 9 1/2-month war on Gaza and the now more than 39,000 Palestinians who’ve been killed during the conflict.
With respect to the global North, we can’t count on the United States to do anything, probably, but to act as a diplomatic shield for Israel in a wide range of areas including the Security Council, the General Assembly, and also to protect it with respect to the impact of this ruling.
But in Europe, we now have a new government in the United Kingdom. We have the makings of a new government in France. Both of them promise to have a more probably critical view towards Israel and its forever occupation. And there are a range of countries already, including Ireland, Belgium, Spain, who have taken strong positions with respect to Israel. In fact, there are several of them joining with South Africa in the future litigation around the Genocide Convention.
So what will happen? We’ll have to wait and see with respect to the General Assembly. But it must be dawning on a wide number of countries, particularly in the Global South, but also in the Global North as well, that Israel is a serial defier of U.N. resolutions and of decisions coming from the International Court of Justice and likely coming from the International Criminal Court as well.
And that until and unless significant economic, political and diplomatic costs are imposed upon Israel for its defiance of international law and all of these resolutions, and for preventing the exercise of Palestinian self-determination and for ending its now illegal occupation, nothing will change there. Accountability has to be the key word for the international community going forward. We have to have a situation where international law, combined with international political resolve, is a direction to try to bring peace and justice to both Israelis and Palestinians.
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