In an unambiguous decision, the International Court of Justice, a United Nations judicial body located in The Hague, declared in a non-binding ruling on last week, that Israel’s 56-year-long rule in “the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” is “illegal,” and that it is obligated to bring its presence in that territory to an end “as rapidly as possible.”
In its decision, the ICJ said it determined Israel’s policy of settlement in the West Bank violates international law and that Israel had effectively annexed large parts of the West Bank — along with East Jerusalem, which was formally annexed in1980 — due to some of the seemingly permanent aspects of Israeli rule there.
The legal consequences of its findings, the court ruled, were that Israel must end its control of these areas, cease new settlement activity, “repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation” — including those which it said “discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” — and provide reparations for any damage caused by its “wrongful acts.”
In addition, the court said that all UN member states are obligated to ensure that any impediment “to the exercise of the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.”
The ICJ’s decision is only an advisory opinion: it has no direct legal consequences on Israel or other UN member states. Still, it cannot be easily ignored because it could be a blow to the Jewish state’s international standing and add political pressure over its nine-month-old war against the Palestinian terror group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, part of Biblical Israel.
Israel did not take part in the hearings. Instead, it submitted a written brief describing the questions the court had been asked as “prejudicial” and “tendentious.”
Israel could also now argue that the ICJ’s extraordinarily narrow and biased legal opinion lacks historical or contemporary context.
There was never an independent Palestinian nation-state or even a distinct Palestinian people before the recognition of the sovereign State of Israel by the United Nations in 1948.
Between 1948 and 1967, when Egypt governed the Gaza Strip (part of biblical Israel) and Jordan controlled the West Bank, there was no cry about the foreign occupation of Palestinian lands.
Between 1917, when the British conquered these lands, and 1948, they formed part of the Mandate for Palestine. Earlier still, from 1517 to 1917, these two territories were part of the Ottoman Empire. Even earlier, these lands were part of the Muslim annexation of the Levant in the seventh century after hundreds of years of Roman rule following the exile of its Indigenous Jewish inhabitants in the first century AD. This expulsion was of indigenous people who had ruled over their own sovereign states for the preceding 2,000 years.
In 131 AD, Emperor Hadrian renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina and constructed the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the site of the former Jewish temple. Jews were banned from Jerusalem, and Roman Judaea was renamed Syria Palaestina, derived from “Palestine” in English and “Filistin” in Arabic.
In short, there is no “Palestine territory occupied since 1967” because there has never been a distinct Palestinian people with a unique language or culture who were displaced from land they had sovereignty over, whether as an independent state or other political entity.
None of this history or the lack of legitimacy of a people who only spuriously see themselves as Palestinians in opposition to the Jewish State of Israel has ever been recognized by the ICJ.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, numerous cabinet ministers, as well as settler leaders roundly denounced the ruling, with some calling for the immediate formal annexation of the West Bank in response.
“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land — not in our eternal capital, Jerusalem, not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said, using the biblical names for the West Bank. “No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth, just as the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested.”
Equally unconscionable was the issue of this ruling during the middle of an existential battle between Israel and its Palestinian mortal enemies, most of whom strongly support the genocidal Hamas terrorists who are their political masters.
This ruling is a victory for Hamas.
“Israeli settlements act as crucial buffers against the kind of aggressions that tend to happen when your neighbors aren’t exactly sending you fruit baskets,” one keen Israeli observer argued. “Judea and Samaria have been a breeding ground for terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Suggesting that Israel dismantle these settlements without any security guarantees is like telling someone to take off their bulletproof vest in the middle of a shootout.”
The ICJ is the same court that demanded on May 4 that the Israel Defense Forces halt all operations in Rafah.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said in response to that ruling, that “the irrelevant order of the antisemitic court in The Hague should have only one answer: the occupation of Rafah, the increase of military pressure and the complete destruction of Hamas – until the complete victory in the war is achieved.”
Former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy wrote on X, “Hamas is holding 125 hostages, presumably many in Rafah. The ICJ has just told Israel it’s not allowed to try to save them and must relinquish military leverage. This is not justice. This is a travesty of justice.”
The ICJ is not only facing severe criticism for these and other highly selective rulings but also for the well-documented anti-Israel bias of the court’s president.
“Put simply, the UN’s highest legal body is a political tool of global antisemitism. The presiding judge in this case was ICJ President Nawaf Salam. He is from Lebanon, a country that does not recognize Israel’s right to exist. And in his spare time, he has tweeted such things as a meme that reads ‘unhappy birthday to you: 48 years of occupation.’ He is a politician – a rabid anti-Israel politician – dressed up by the UN as a judge,” Anne Bayefsky, the director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, told Fox News Digital.
Israel has never received justice at the International Court of Justice.
Hymie Rubenstein is editor of REAL Indigenous Report, a retired professor of anthropology, and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
