Top UN court says Israeli occupation of West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal
The opinion from the International Court of Justice stated that “Israel is under an obligation to bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.”
An advisory opinion is not legally binding but carries moral authority and can shape international law, according to the ICJ.
Judge Nawaf Salam, the president of the ICJ, based in The Hague in the Netherlands, said the court observed that “large-scale confiscation of land and the degradation of access to natural resources divests the local population of their basic means of subsistence thus inducing their departure.”
The court also found that the declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital helped to “entrench Israel’s control of the occupied Palestinian territory.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other politicians rejected the opinion.
“The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “Neither in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria,” referring to the occupied 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,” the prime minister said.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz also condemned the ICJ advisory opinion, calling it “fundamentally warped, one-sided, and wrong.”
This is a breaking news story. More updates to come...
The International Court of Justice's opinion, while not legally binding on the 'middleeast' region, has the potential to influence the 'world's' perception on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite the ICJ's ruling, leaders in the Middle East, such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, maintain that Israeli presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is historically justified.
