Palestinians urge world to end Israel’s illegal occupation after ICJ ruling | News about the Israel-Palestine conflict

Activists and legal experts in the West Bank say Friday’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories illegal, will do little to improve the lives of Palestinians.

Other states must now apply collective pressure on Israel to end its rule over Gaza and the West Bank, including annexed East Jerusalem, if the situation there is to change, they say.

The world’s highest court ruled Friday – 12 to three – that Israel is forcibly displacing Palestinians from their land, exploiting water sources, annexing large swathes of occupied territory “by force” and violating Palestinians’ right to “self-determination.”

The ICJ also ruled that Israel must halt all settlement construction in the West Bank and compensate Palestinians for human rights violations in the occupied territory.

The ruling is a non-binding advisory opinion, which was requested by the United Nations General Assembly in 2022, seeking to clarify the legal implications of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

The ICJ called on the UN – especially the Security Council and the General Assembly – to take steps to bring about a “swift” end to Israel’s illegal occupation.

However, Zainah el-Haroun, a spokeswoman for Al-Haq, a West Bank-based Palestinian nonprofit that monitors human rights violations, said previous ICJ rulings have not led to global action against Israel.

He referred to the ICJ’s 2004 advisory opinion which found the separation wall and Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land illegal. Not only have settlements remained in the West Bank since the ruling, but the number of Israeli settlers living there has also increased from 250,000 in 1993 to more than 700,000 in 2023.

“These rulings mean nothing if third states and the international community do not hold Israel accountable,” he told Al Jazeera.

“The ICJ has ruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must end immediately. Third States must guarantee the full and complete exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and sanction the illegal Israeli occupation, which violates international law,” he added.

Little to celebrate

Palestinian activists in the West Bank said they cannot celebrate the ICJ ruling when the situation across the occupied territory is worse than ever.

They cited Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 38,848 Palestinians — the vast majority of them civilians — and left the enclave uninhabitable. Gaza is also witnessing an outbreak of diseases such as polio and cholera, while nearly the entire population is struggling to survive food shortages brought on by Israel’s siege of the enclave.

Israel’s war on Gaza followed Hamas-led attacks on military posts and communities in southern Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and 251 taken prisoner.

Global attention – and shock – over Israel’s war has since diverted attention from its West Bank settlement expansion, observers said.

“A year ago, a ruling like this would have been great. We would all have thought it was a big step forward,” said Tasame Ramadan, a human rights activist from the West Bank city of Nablus. “But right now, the priority is a permanent ceasefire (in Gaza) and an end to the occupation.”

Mohamad Alwan, a Palestinian rights activist who monitors settler attacks in the West Bank, expressed similar caution about what the ruling will mean on the ground.

He said that while he acknowledged that the ruling damaged Israel’s image abroad, there was no way the court could implement or enforce it.

Alwan also said he is pessimistic about whether states will take action against Israel following the ruling. He cited perceived indifference to the ICJ’s binding order in January, in which the court urged Israel to increase aid and prevent further harm to civilians in Gaza after concluding that “Palestinian rights were at risk” under the Genocide Convention.

“In my opinion, this decision will not have an immediate impact on the situation on the ground,” he told Al Jazeera.

“However, in the long term, there could be an impact. The world has now seen how Israel kills people and children, and its views on Israel and its occupation are changing.”

“The Nakba is where it all began”

Palestinian activists stressed that Friday’s ICJ advisory ruling must be understood in the context of the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” of 1948, when Zionist militias expelled some 750,000 Palestinians from their land to create the state of Israel.

Palestinian legal expert Diana Buttu said she wished the ICJ had referred to the Nakba to highlight the historical pattern of Israel’s behaviour in the occupied territory.

“While I am happy with the outcome of this case, I also believe that this focus on just the West Bank and Gaza ignores the broader picture of the origins of this situation and the ways in which Israel was created, which was through the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” Buttu told Al Jazeera.

He criticized the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs large swathes of the West Bank and represents the Palestinian people internationally, for the way the Israel-Palestine issue is often framed by and within the global community.

He accused the Palestinian Authority of having long since abandoned advocating for stateless Palestinians to exercise the right to return to their former homes and lands lost during the Nakba or calling for an end to the discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel.

Experts and activists have previously attributed the PA’s shortcomings to the Oslo Accords, the first of which was signed in 1993 by then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn.

“The PA has long taken the position that what is important is the two-state solution and the end of the occupation, so their entire discourse has been about that,” Buttu said.

Ramadan agreed on the importance of focusing on the Nakba whenever discussing Israel’s settlement expansion and its war in Gaza.

“This all started with the Nakba. How can we not mention the cause of the problem and where it all started? This is not the right way to approach an issue like this,” he said.

“We would certainly like the international community to recognise the Nakba, to recognise all the people we lost in 1948 and to recognise the consequences of the Nakba that we are still living with today.”