The court says that Israel’s settlement policy violates international law. – Israel’s settlements and use of natural resources in the occupied areas do not comply with international law, says ICJ judge Nawaf Salam from the Peace Palace in The Hague. The Court concludes that Israel’s policy in the occupied territories is designed to cause irreversible damage and is therefore annexation. The Court says Israel’s policies and practices violate the Geneva Conventions. The court also states that Israel’s settler policy has created violence between settlers and others. Israel has systematically failed to prevent violence and to punish settlers. Possible annexation The court sees with great concern that the settler policy has increased, says Salam. 24,300 new houses are set up in Palestinian territory in 2022 and 2023. In July, Israel’s government approved over 5,200 new ones. – The legal consequences of this could be annexation, says Salam. The fact that Israel has declared Jerusalem as its capital, even though East Jerusalem belongs to Palestine according to the UN, makes matters worse, says Salam. Israel’s settlement policy is a source of great criticism from the international community and Palestine. – This is the most important of all the legal processes about Israel and Palestine right now. It is about the very core of the conflict, says Cecilie Hellestveit from the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights. This is not the court case where South Africa has blamed Israel for committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. That case is also being dealt with in the ICJ, but is still ongoing. What are the occupied areas? It is the UN’s General Assembly that has asked the court to decide what consequences the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem has on Israel and how the UN countries should react to it. The West Bank and East Jerusalem, in addition to the Gaza Strip, are Palestinian territory, according to the UN resolution that lays the foundation for a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. But since the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel took control of the two latter areas, over 700,000 Israelis have settled and built up small and large communities there. – Occupation is an intermediate situation, a response to military aggression. It cannot last, said ICJ judge Salam. According to the conventions, an occupying power must not move its citizens to the occupied area by force. It has been Israel’s argument that the settlements do not violate human rights; the Israeli settlers have moved there of their own free will. But the ICJ believes that the settlements are contrary to the conventions and international law. At the same time, they push Palestinians out of their homes and out of the area. The pink fields show Palestinian areas from 1949 until 1967. Gaza was then occupied by Egypt. The West Bank was occupied by Jordan. When Norway now recognizes Palestine as its own state, these are the borders Norway believes the state of Palestine and the state of Israel should be based on, with Jerusalem as the shared capital and with an opening for land exchange agreements. The pink fields show the Palestinian territories today. In Gaza, the war between Israel and Hamas is in full swing. In the West Bank, the pink areas show which areas are Palestinian-ruled and partially Palestinian-ruled. The dark blue areas are under Israeli control. Graphics: Eirik Kirkaune, news / MAP DATA FROM OPENSTREETMAP The settlements are illegal under international law, but Israel sees them as legitimate. Together with military presence, checkpoints and roadblocks, house searches and a wall around and through the West Bank, this limits Palestinians’ freedom to move on their own territory, the UN believes. This wall goes around and through parts of Vestbreidda. The ICJ has previously advised Israel to remove the wall, but Israel has not listened. Photo: NIR ELIAS / Reuters / NTB Not legally binding – This will be important for the discussion between Israel and other states to be conducted on the basis of international law, not politics. It provides an international law argument for criticizing the settlements, explains Professor Jo Stigen at the Department of Public Law. The ICJ does not issue a judgment, but an advisory statement. Although the court has arrived at the award in the same way as they would arrive at a judgment, it is not legally binding. – But if Israel or other countries choose to look away from the term, they are simultaneously looking away from international law itself. Then one can say with legal weight that they still violate international law, says Stigen. Jo Stigen is a lawyer and researcher on international law. He says that an ICJ opinion will be important even if it is not legally binding. Photo: Christian Breilid Israel has previously rejected statements from the ICJ. In 2004, the court held that the Israeli wall on the West Bank, which separates many Palestinian families from each other, violates international law and should be demolished. Since then, Israel has only extended the wall. – Reminders of annexation The expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory has for several decades been among the most heated issues between Israel, Palestine and the international community. The UN has stated a number of times that the settlements are illegal, including in 2016 in the UN’s most powerful body, the Security Council. One in three settlers move there for religious reasons, because according to the Bible this was Jewish land. But many of them are also secular and have moved there because of the low cost of living and financial benefits that the Israeli government offers them. Housing project in the Israeli settlement of Givat Ze’ev in the West Bank, 18 June 2023. Photo: AP Sidan Netanyahu gained power and formed Israel’s most far-reaching government ever, they have only increased in number and scope. This is recorded by the Israeli organization Peace Now. – This annexation undermines the security and future of both Israelis and Palestinians. Future generations will pay the price, the organization wrote in June, when the government decided to build over 5,200 new homes on occupied land. Palestinian leaders say that the settlements cut off Palestinian communities from each other and undermined any hope for an independent Palestinian state. Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide recently told news that the situation is beginning to resemble a form of annexation. Both Peace Now and the Israeli human rights organization BTselem see the settlement policy, and the violence that follows, as a way to push the Palestinians completely out of the occupied West Bank. The most important court case, Usemja, surrounding the Palestinian territories is precisely the core of the conflict in the Middle East. Hellestveit explains that the biggest obstacle to an independent Palestinian state. – The ruling from the ICJ comes at a critical time for the Palestinians, says Cecilie Hellestveit at the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights. Cecilie Hellestveit is a lawyer, researcher at the Folkerettsinstituttet, expert on the Middle East and holds a doctorate in international law of war from UiO. She believes this is the most important international court case about the Middle East conflict. Photo: Cicilie Sigrid Andersen / news Most UN countries recognize Palestine as a state. But yesterday the Knesset, the Israeli national assembly, concluded that it will be an existential threat to Israel. – They did that to counter what is coming from The Hague today. They probably didn’t appreciate what came of it, to put it mildly, says Hellestveit. Published 19.07.2024, at 15.38 Updated 19.07.2024, at 15.55
ttn-69
ICJ gives its assessment of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
