The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on Wednesday that Israel’s settlement and occupation activity in Palestinian territory breach international law. The court’s decision came after the UN General Assembly requested an advisory opinion from the body on Israel’s practices in the occupied territories.
The world court held that Israel’s policies and practices violated a number of international agreements including the Hague Convention of 1907, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The tribunal took issue with Israel’s policy of settling Israeli citizens in the West Bank, ruling that the establishment of Israeli settlements on occupied territory and the legalization of illegal “outposts,” settlements established against Israeli law, breaches the Fourth Geneva Convention. Article 49 of the convention states that an “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The ICJ elaborated, “The transfer of members of the civilian population of the occupying Power into the occupied territory is prohibited regardless of whether it results in the displacement of the local population.”
The court also ruled that Israel’s use of the Occupied Palestinian Territory’s natural resources for its own benefit, the extension of Israeli law into the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the forced displacement of the Palestinian population in some areas, its failure to punish extremist settlers who attack Palestinians, and separation of settler and Palestinian communities in the West Bank all violate the country’s international obligations.
Additionally, the court held that Israel’s integration of East and West Jerusalem, the mention of settlements in the country’s Basic Law, the development of Israeli infrastructure for the use of West Bank settlers, and the extension of Israeli law into the settlements, amounts “to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” This, along with Israel’s “violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” led the ICJ to conclude that Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful.
As a result, the court imposed obligations on Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territory “as rapidly as possible,” to immediately cease its settlement activity, to repeal all discriminatory legislation against Palestinians, and to “provide full reparation” to those affected by its illegal acts. It also obligated other UN member states not to recognize Israel’s occupation as legal.
Eleven of the court’s 15 judges agreed with all findings, while court vice president Julia Sebutinde was the only judge to pen a dissent. The judge called the majority’s approach “imbalanced” and asserted that the court improperly ignored Israeli territorial claims and the historical background to the controversy. Sebutinde aligned with Israel’s argument that the questions posed by the UN General Assembly’s request for an advisory opinion “present a clear distortion of the history and present reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The judge claimed that the court should have considered the Jewish connection to the territory and examined historical attempts at creating a two-state solution before rendering an advisory opinion on the issue, concluding, “the Court should have been careful to guard its judicial character and integrity by ensuring that the nuanced and more complex issues that require resolution through negotiation, are left to the negotiation framework.”
While the Palestinian Foreign Ministry lauded the ICJ’s opinion as a “watershed moment for Palestine and the international law-based order,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked the court’s decision:
The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria, our historical homeland. No absurd opinion in the Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestral home.
Friday’s opinion is separate from the measures the ICJ has directed Israel to implement in a genocide case filed against the country by South Africa regarding Israel’s ongoing offensive in the Gaza Strip following the October 7 attacks. The war in Gaza has thus far seen nearly 2 million people, 85 percent of the territory’s population, displaced and more than 38,000 people killed—mostly civilians. Israel has denied accusations of genocide and war crimes.
Although ICJ decisions are binding on UN member states, the ICJ depends on the UN Security Council to enforce its decisions.
