Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles near the West Bank town of Beita
Wahaj Bani Moufleh/AFP
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Wahaj Bani Moufleh/AFP
The United Nations Supreme Court in The Hague declared on Friday that Israel’s 57-year occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem was “illegal” and called on Israel to end its presence in the occupied territories, including by dismantling Israeli settlements and paying reparations.
The advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice is not binding and is unlikely to have any real impact on the ground in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where some 700,000 Israelis live, according to the UN.
But the decision is the first of its kind in which the court has ruled on the legality of the Israeli occupation and will deal a further blow to Israel’s international standing.
“The State of Israel has an obligation to end its illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as expeditiously as possible,” said ICJ President Nawaf Salam, who delivered the ruling on behalf of the 15-member court.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the move, calling its reasoning “mendacious.” Mr. Netanyahu said: “The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land.”
The office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the decision “historic” and demanded that “Israel be forced to implement it,” in a statement carried by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
The ICJ is also examining South Africa’s accusations that Israel’s 10-month war against Hamas in Gaza amounts to genocide, a charge Israel denies. The country launched its devastating campaign to destroy Hamas after the Palestinian militant group launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people according to Israel. The Gaza war has killed more than 38,000 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 war against its Arab neighbors. Since then, Israeli settlers, who call the area Judea and Samaria, have built settlements there that the international community has long considered illegal.
The Gaza Strip’s settlements were dismantled in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the southern coastal enclave. Two years later, Hamas, an Islamist group, took control of the territory after a brief civil war with its secular rival Fatah. Israel imposed restrictions on the entry of goods into the area, a blockade that was tightened further during its military campaign after the October 7 Hamas attack.
The Palestinian Authority, which controls part of the occupied West Bank, wants to create an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. The current Israeli administration rejects any such demands.
As the war rages in Gaza, violence has also escalated in the West Bank, where Israeli forces have carried out increasing raids against Palestinian militant groups and settlers have stepped up their own attacks on Palestinians.
The ICJ opinion issued on Friday predates the current war in Gaza and was written following a request by the UN General Assembly before the current conflict in Gaza.
