Israel’s 57-year “occupation” has deprived Palestinians of their basic rights to a state, Irish and Jordanian officials told the International Court of Justice as they urged its judges to issue an advisory opinion rendering the situation illegal.
“By its prolonged occupation of Palestinian lands and continuous settlement activity on those lands – Israel has prevented the exercise by the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination,” Ireland’s Attorney General Rossa Fanning told the court on Thursday.
Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told the ICJ that “there can be no peace until the occupation ends” and the right of the Palestinians to self-determination” is realized through the establishment of a state “on 4 June 1967 lines.”
Ireland and Jordan were among 49 countries and three organizations that are addressing the court during the six-day process that began February 19 and is expected to end this coming Monday.
The United Nations General Assembly had asked the ICJ at the Hague to issue a non-binding legal ruling on the status of Israeli control of the territories it captured from Jordan and Egypt during the 1967 Six-Day War.
The request was submitted before the Israel-Hamas war, but the hearing itself took place more than four months into the IDF’s military campaign to oust the terror group from Gaza.
The hearing also comes as there are calls by politicians in Europe for the unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood and the US is pushing to relaunch a peace process through the framework of a Saudi normalization deal.
Israel has boycotted the hearing, arguing that the ICJ lacks jurisdiction and that the intent of those seeking a ruling was to deprive the Jewish state of its right to self-defense and to avoid a negotiated peace process by seeking unilateral solutions.The Palestinian Authority was blunt on the opening day of the hearing about its intention to use the ruling to isolate Israel diplomatically as a way of forcing it to withdraw to the pre-1967 lines.
On Thursday Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Raza Najafi asked the ICJ to issue an opinion that would allow for Israel to be internationally isolated as he accused Israel of acts of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people.
The legal advisor to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Ma Xinman, argued that the Palestinians had a legal right to violently resist Israel’s occupation, but stressed that this must be done within the framework of international humanitarian law.
The right of Palestinians to use force to resist “foreign “occupation” or “colonial domination is an “inalienable right” supported by international law and numerous United Nations General Assembly resolutions, Ma argued.
“Armed struggle in this context is distinguished from acts of terrorism,” Ma explained. He stressed however that, even in legitimate armed struggles, “all parties are obliged to comply with international humanitarian law, and in particular, to refrain from committing acts of terrorism in violation” of that law.
The United States and Hungary, who spoke with the ICJ on Wednesday, have been among a small number of countries that have stood with Israel and have asked the ICJ not to issue an advisory opinion noting that it prejudices a negotiated settlement to the conflict.
Attila Hidegh of Hungary’s Foreign Ministry underscored the security threats Israel faced from the Palestinians including the Hamas-led October 7 attack, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 253 seized as hostages.
Hidegh warned that a ruling that the occupation was illegal could contribute to “escalating” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by cementing its politicization. Utilizing the court “in the communication war could create newer dividing lines and could continue to fuel tensions,” Hidegh said.
Gergo Kocsis, who heads Hungary’s United Nations Department, said that the UNGA’s question to the court was written in a way that presumed that the “occupation” was illegal and almost predetermined the outcome.
What is most needed here, Kocsis said, is a diplomatic resolution to the conflict through direct negations.
Fanning of Ireland began by condemning the Hamas October 7 attack but then dismissed its relevance or the larger security issue to the question of the “occupations” legality.
Limitations to self-defense
Self-defense, under international law, limits the use of force in self-defense to no more than what is necessary and proportionate, Fanning said.
“These limits have been exceeded by Israel in its military response to the Hamas attack,” Fanning said as he referred to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas.
When looking at Israel’s 57-year rule over territory designed for Palestinian statehood, he said that the country can not rely in perpetuity on the argument that “the occupation” is necessary for its self-defense.
“If the security of one people can only be achieved by the occupation – over so many decades – of the territory of another people, one has to wonder whether there can be any military solution to the problem it purports to address.|
In our view, the only effective solution to the problem can be a political one.”
Ireland was dismayed, Fanning said, by the absence of an “imminent prospect of a negotiated outcome” and had come to believe that the occupation was permanent in nature.
Ireland views Israeli settlement activity and its increasing application of domestic law to that territory as forms of an illegal annexation, even though there has been no formal decision “The absence of any declaration of annexation or formal de jure act of incorporation over most of the West Bank is immaterial,” Fanning said.
“To assert that this is not the case because Israel has not formally declared annexation would render the prohibition [on annexation as] devoid of all meaning,” he explained.
“The nature, scale, and duration of settlement activity is such that its purpose can only be to permanently obstruct the exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” Fanning said.
He acknowledged the diplomatic and political nature of the situation but said that the ICJ has a role to play in the conflict in light of the absence of a peace process.
The fact that “a legal question may have a political dimension, does not [disqualify] the court’s jurisdiction,” he said.
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