As the UN’s highest court holds its final day of hearings, more countries say Israel’s decades-old illegal occupation of Palestine must end.
Turkey has joined a large number of countries that have condemned Israel’s decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territories before the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmet Yildiz was the first representative to speak on the final day of the hearings on Monday, capping a week-long event in which 52 countries and several international organizations testified about the occupation of Palestine by Israel.
He said the long-running conflict could have been resolved now if international and human rights laws had been respected by Israel and its Western allies, and highlighted how the United Nations Security Council has failed to protect the inalienable rights of the Palestinians.
He said Israel’s “increasing occupation of the Palestinian territories” and the failure of its allies to commit to implementing a two-state solution were the main underlying problems.
In a report from outside the Hague court, Tel Aviv Tribune’s Bernard Smith said Turkey echoed many of the arguments made by dozens of countries since last week.
“Turkey said Palestinians were subjected to practices from the Middle Ages under occupation, it said Palestinians only needed emancipation with dignity,” he said.
“And the Turks have particularly focused on the Haram al-Sharif, as Muslims call it, or the Temple Mount, as Jews call it, which is supposed to be administered by the Jordanians according to a long-standing principle dating back to before creation. of the State of Israel. Turkey accuses the Israelis of frequently abusing the independence of the Haram al-Sharif.”
This case is separate from South Africa’s genocide case against Israel for its ongoing war on Gaza, which has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians since October 7, most of them women and children. The Israeli army killed around 400 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during the same period.
The Israeli army continued to bombard various parts of the Gaza Strip during the ICJ hearing, killing more than 90 Palestinians and injuring 164 in the 24 hours before the final hearing.
Tamer Qarmout, assistant professor of public policy at the Doha Institute of Advanced Studies, said Turkey had taken more drastic steps in the past in its relations with Israel, including severing diplomatic and economic ties.
“But in this war we saw a different position,” he told Tel Aviv Tribune, adding that the Turkish government continues to criticize Israel but does not adopt positions similar to those in the past.
“I think it has to do with Turkey’s domestic politics,” he said, citing Turkey’s emergence from a serious economic crisis as the cause. “They (Turkish officials) do not want to upset other key partners in the West by taking drastic positions.”
“Racial domination”
The unprecedented review by the world’s highest court of Israel’s current occupation and the system of apartheid it imposes on the Palestinians comes after the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution in December 2022 calling for a opinion of the ICJ.
The United States defended Israel at the hearings, which itself had refused to attend, saying its presence would jeopardize a future settlement with the Palestinians.
“Within the established framework, any movement toward Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza requires consideration of Israel’s very real security needs,” Richard Visek, legal adviser, told the court last week. from the US Department of State.
Arab countries on Monday reiterated their divergent views with Washington on the issue, with the group of 22 countries telling the court that it condemns violations of international law stemming from “Israel’s racial domination and apartheid perpetrated against the Palestinian people.”
“The Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination through racist, violent and colonial efforts lasting more than a century to establish a nation-state exclusively for the Jewish people on the land of Mandatory Palestine,” said Rep. Ralph. » said Wilde.