Israel should evacuate Palestinian settlements, pay reparations, International Court of Justice says

Palestinians inspect the area after an Israeli attack hits displaced people's camps in Al-Mawasi area of Khan Yunis, Gaza on July 13, 2024. Photo / Anadolu via Getty Images

The International Court of Justice, the top judicial arm of the United Nations, said Israel should end its occupation of Palestinian territory, evacuate existing settlements, stop building new ones and pay reparations to Palestinians who have lost land and property.

In a sweeping 83-page legal opinion, the court, based in The Hague, said Israel is responsible for “systematic discrimination” against Palestinians based on race or ethnicity, has breached the right of Palestinians to self-determination and has effectively annexed large swaths of land.

“Israel has an obligation to bring an end to its presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as rapidly as possible,” Nawaf Salam, the court’s president, said from the bench on Friday. He added that the court considers Israel’s continued presence illegal and a “wrongful act.”

The searing advisory opinion is non-binding but still holds legal weight and could have broader consequences in the international arena, including in trade and diplomacy. The court said member states should not recognise as legal the situation arising from Israel’s presence in occupied territory, nor should they render aid or assistance in maintaining it.

Such a ruling could force companies and member states to differentiate between Israel and occupied territory when it comes to trade, said Chantal Meloni, senior legal adviser for international crimes and accountability at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.

Israel declined to take part in the hearings and described the proceedings as biased and an “abuse of international law and the judicial process.”

“The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on X after the announcement. “No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested.”

The office of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, described the opinion as “historic” and said Israel should be compelled to implement it.

The ruling was the first time any international court has weighed in on the core issues related to the legality of Israel’s occupation of the territory it seized during the 1967 war with neighbouring Arab countries.

The case was initiated by a UN General Assembly resolution in 2022 but has since taken on more significance as the decades-old conflict entered a period of unprecedented bloodshed. On October 7, Hamas led an attack on Israel that killed about 1200 people, starting a war inside the Gaza Strip that has claimed more than 38,800 Palestinian lives, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

South Africa lodged ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide

Israel has faced mounting international pressure over the war, including in a separate case South Africa lodged at the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, charges Israeli officials have vehemently denied. At the same time, the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor announced that he is seeking arrest warrants both for Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“This is as clear and as far-reaching a ruling as I have come across from this court,” said Philippe Sands, an international barrister and member of the Palestinian legal team. He described Friday’s opinion as “hugely significant” and potentially more impactful than the genocide case, as it addresses the “core of Israel’s policy.”

“Its legal consequences are entirely without ambiguity, its political consequences far-reaching,” he said, adding that the court “made clear its view, by an overwhelming majority” that the US and other embassies relocated to Jerusalem are “illegal and must be removed for international law to be respected.”

The UN General Assembly had asked the court to determine several things, including the impact of Israel’s occupation, its “ongoing violation” of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, and its “discriminatory laws” and measures aimed at altering “the demographic composition, character and status” of Jerusalem, part of which Palestinians envision as the capital of any future state.

In a statement to the court last year, Israel said the issues presented “represent a clear distortion of history.”

“In pointing a finger at one side only, the questions overlook thousands of dead and wounded Israelis who have fallen victim to murderous Palestinian acts of hatred and terrorism - acts that continue to endanger Israel’s civilians and national security on a daily basis,” the Israeli statement said. “The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a cartoon narrative of villain and victim in which there are no Israeli rights and no Palestinian obligations.”

Relatives of Palestinians, who were killed by Israeli attacks on UNRWA school, mourn as Palestinians examine the destroyed makeshift tents and shelters in Nuseirat Refugee Camp of Deir al-Balah, Gaza on July 14, 2024. Photo / Anadolu via Getty Images

Israel says the territories it captured in 1967 - including East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza - were on disputed land and therefore aren’t occupied according to legal terms. But the United Nations and most of the international community regard them as occupied territory.

The court also said Israel was responsible for “full reparation” for damage caused by its “internationally wrongful acts” to “all natural or legal persons concerned.”

Salam, the court president, noted that about 11,000 Palestinian buildings had been demolished in occupied territory since 2009, either because of a lack of building permits or for punitive reasons.

The opinion also accused Israel of a “systematic failure” in preventing or punishing attacks by Jewish settlers in the West Bank, creating a “coercive environment” for Palestinians that is inconsistent with Israel’s responsibilities as an occupying power.

It said Israel’s policies and practices “entrench” its control of illegally occupied territory, creating “irreversible effects on the ground” that essentially amount to the annexation of “large parts” of Palestinian territory.

More than 50 countries presented at hearings, US warned against Israeli withdrawal

More than 50 countries presented opinions during hearings at The Hague earlier this year, with most urging the court to declare Israel’s occupation illegal. The United States, a key ally of Israel, warned against a call for a “unilateral, immediate and unconditional withdrawal that does not account for Israel’s legitimate security needs.”

“The content is huge, it’s even beyond what we were expecting in terms of being so clear cut,” Meloni said of the opinion.

“Of course it’s not a judgment, it’s an advisory opinion,” she said. “But it’s coming from the highest judicial organ, most respected judicial organ at the UN”

Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in 1967 during a swift and resounding defeat of Arab armies led by Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Since the 1990s, the United States and its allies have backed a two-state solution to the conflict, based on the pre-1967 borders.

But Israel has steadily expanded its settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, drastically altering the territory. Between November 2022 and October 2023, Israel “advanced or approved” 24,300 new housing units on occupied territory, Salam said. That included 9,670 in East Jerusalem.

Israel claims sovereignty over the entirety of Jerusalem, describing the city as its “eternal” and “undivided capital.”

Israeli troops and settlers withdrew from Gaza in 2005 but retained control of its borders and ports and restricted the entry of goods and people. Thousands of soldiers are now back in Gaza, battling Hamas and occupying key parts of the enclave.

The court said that Israel’s degree of obligation in Gaza as an occupying power was “commensurate with the degree of its effective control.”

In the West Bank, Palestinians have been squeezed into ever-shrinking islands of land. Presenting the Palestinian case to the court this year, Riad Malki, the Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister at the time, accused Israel of “colonialism and apartheid.” He held up maps to show the drastic erosion of Palestinian territory.

“From an Israeli perspective, it feels like the court completely ignores any Israeli claims to the territories,” said Eran Shamir-Borer, head of the security and democracy program at the Israel Democracy Institute and a former legal adviser to the Israeli military.

If there is any small win for Israel, it is that the court was ambiguous on whether Israel was responsible for any apartheid, said Borer.

Salam said Israel was in breach of an article of an international convention on racial discrimination, which says that states should condemn and prevent apartheid and discrimination, but he did not detail how Israel was in breach.

“It’s a big thing using the a-word,” he said. “It puts Israel in a category it definitely doesn’t want to be at.”