Why the ICJ’s ruling against Israel’s settlement policies will be hard to ignore

By Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, July 19, 2024

The ruling defies Israel’s allies such as the UK and the US, which for years have been lenient on the occupation of Palestinian territories.

Comprehensive, detailed and comprehensive, the advisory judgment of the International Court of Justice on the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the establishment of settlements constitutes a scathing refutation of Israel’s claims and will have a profound impact for years to come.

The ICJ has declared Israel’s long-term occupation of Palestinian territory “illegal,” amounting to de facto annexation. The court called on Israel to promptly vacate the occupied territories and ruled that Palestinians were entitled to reparations for the harm suffered during 57 years of a systematically discriminatory occupation.

In its many parts, the ruling represents a devastating defeat for Israel before the World Court.

While numerous UN reports and General Assembly resolutions have gone in the same direction, the ICJ ruling, because it refers to a treaty and individual laws, represents a judgment that will be difficult to ignore.

The ruling also refutes Israel’s argument that the ICJ lacked jurisdiction to consider the issue because UN resolutions, as well as Israeli-Palestinian bilateral agreements, had established that the correct framework for resolving the conflict should be political, not legal.

Rejecting this argument, the Court affirmed that international law applied regardless of decades of failed political efforts to reach a lasting peace agreement, especially as Israel continued to build settlements.

The ruling, which takes half an hour to read, draws on a wealth of international law, from the Geneva Conventions to the Hague Convention, to defend a point that Palestinians and critics of Israeli policy in the international community have considered self-evident for years.

In summary, he said that years of official and self-proclaimed Israeli ambition to build and settle in the occupied territories amounted to an intention to effectively annex territory in violation of international law; that these policies were designed to benefit the settlers and Israel, not the Palestinians living under military administration.

Perhaps the most important section is the ruling that “Israel’s transfer of settlers to the West Bank and Jerusalem, and Israel’s continued presence there, are contrary to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

While the individual paragraphs applying to each violation of international law – and each inconsistency – are not surprising, the judgment, taken as a whole, poses a profound challenge to governments, including the UK and the US, which for years have been soft on Israel’s occupation policies, criticising settlement building but, until recently, doing little concrete about it.

While things have changed in recent months, with a series of US, British and European sanctions targeting violent settlers, both individually and the groups that support them, the advisory decision raises a much more serious question: given the gravity of the violations of international law, should sanctions also be applied to Israeli ministers and institutions that support the settlement enterprise?

Although not binding, the decision will provide ample guidance to international lawyers who are already actively considering future sanctions against individuals linked to Israeli settlement activity.

Importantly, the Court took note of the recent and ongoing transfer of powers from the military to civilian officials overseeing the occupied territories, which critics said further exposed Israel’s activities to the Court.

Timing is also important. With Israel isolated over its conduct of the Gaza war and under investigation by 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 deepen that isolation.

If the decision seemed inevitable, it is because of Israel’s rightward drift under its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who now leads a coalition that includes far-right parties and ministers that support settlements and has adopted exactly the policies for which Israel has been condemned.

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Source: The Guardian