Thorough, detailed and all encompassing, the international court of justice’s advisory ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and settlement building represents a stark refutation of Israel’s claims, and will have a profound impact for years to come.
The ICJ declared Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory “unlawful” and said it amounted to de facto annexation. The court called for Israel to rapidly quit the occupied territories and ruled Palestinians were due reparations for the harm of 57 years of an occupation that systematically discriminates against them.
And in its many parts, the judgment represents a devastating defeat for Israel in the world court.
While numerous UN reports and resolutions in the general assembly have made the same point, the ICJ ruling, by virtue of being made in reference to treaty and individual laws, represents a judgment that will be hard to ignore.
The ruling also stood as a rebuke to Israel’s argument that the ICJ had no standing to consider the issue on the grounds that UN resolutions, as well as bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreements, had established that the correct framework for resolving the conflict should be political, not legal.
Effectively rejecting that argument, the court asserted that international law applies regardless of the decades of failed political efforts to reach a lasting peace agreement, not least as Israel has continued with its settlement-building.
Taking half an hour to read, the ruling gathered together multiple strands of international law from the Geneva conventions to the Hague convention to make a case that has been obvious to Palestinians and to critics of Israeli policy in the international community for years.
In summary it said that years of Israel’s own officially and self-described ambitions to build and settle in the occupied territories amounted to an intent to effectively annex territory against international law; that those policies were designed to benefit settlers and Israel, not the Palestinians living under military administration.
Perhaps the most significant section was the judgment that “the transfer by Israel of settlers to the West Bank and Jerusalem as well as Israel’s maintenance of their presence, is contrary to article 49 of the 4th Geneva convention”.
While the individual paragraphs applying to each breach of international law – and each inconsistency – were not surprising, taken in its entirety the ruling offers a profound challenge to governments, including the UK and US, that had for years soft-pedalled on Israel’s occupation policies, criticising settlement building but until recently doing little practical about it.
If that has changed in recent months, with a raft of US, UK and European sanctions targeting violent settlers, both individually and the groups that support them, the advisory ruling poses a far more serious question: whether, given the severity of the breaches of international law, sanctions should also be applied to Israeli ministers and institutions supporting the settlement enterprise.
While non-binding, the ruling will provide ample ammunition for government lawyers already actively examining future sanctions against those linked to Israeli settlement.
Significant in the ruling was that the court had noted the recent and continuing transfer of powers from the military to civilian officials overseeing the occupied territories, which critics had warned further exposed Israel activities to the court.
The timing, too, is significant. With Israel isolated over its conduct of the Gaza war, and under investigation at the ICJ and the international criminal court for alleged war crimes, the stark assessment of the long-term illegality of Israel’s occupation will only reinforce that isolation.
If the ruling felt inevitable, it was because of Israel’s own rightward drift under its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who now heads a coalition that includes far-right pro-settler parties and ministers and has embraced exactly the policies for which Israel has been condemned.
