West Bank activists and legal experts say Friday’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal will do little to improve the lives of Palestinians.
Other states must now collectively pressure Israel to end its control over Gaza and the West Bank, including annexed East Jerusalem, if the situation is to change, they say.
The world’s highest court ruled Friday – 12-3 in favor – that Israel is forcibly displacing Palestinians from their land, exploiting water sources, annexing large swathes of occupied territory “by force” and violating the Palestinians’ right to “self-determination.”
The ICJ also ruled that Israel must stop all settlement construction in the West Bank and compensate Palestinians for human rights violations in the occupied territory.
The decision is a non-binding advisory opinion, requested by the UN General Assembly in 2022, aimed at clarifying the legal implications of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.
The ICJ called on the UN – particularly the Security Council and the General Assembly – to take steps to “promptly” end 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.
She referred to the ICJ’s 2004 advisory opinion that found the separation wall and Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land illegal. Not only have settlements remained in the West Bank since the decision, but the number of Israeli settlers living there has also increased, from 250,000 in 1993 to more than 700,000 by 2023.
“These decisions mean nothing if third states and the international community fail to hold Israel to account,” she told Tel Aviv Tribune.
“The ICJ has ruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal and must end immediately. Third states must ensure the full realization of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and sanction Israel’s illegal occupation, which violates international law,” she added.
Little to celebrate
Palestinian activists in the West Bank said they could not rejoice at the ICJ ruling when the situation in the occupied territory was worse than ever.
They cited Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed at least 38,848 Palestinians – the vast majority civilians – and left the enclave uninhabitable. Gaza is also the scene of an outbreak of diseases such as polio and cholera, while almost the entire population struggles to survive food shortages caused by Israel’s siege of the enclave.
Israel’s war on Gaza follows attacks by Hamas on military outposts and communities in southern Israel on October 7, in which 1,139 people were killed and 251 captured.
Global attention – and shock – over Israel’s war has since diverted attention from its West Bank settlement expansion, observers said.
“A year ago, such a decision would have been a good thing. We would have all 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 wariness about the decision’s consequences on the ground.
He said that while he acknowledges that the ruling damages Israel’s image abroad, the court has no means of implementing or enforcing it.
Additionally, Alwan said he was pessimistic about the possibility of states taking action against Israel after the ruling. He cited the apparent indifference to the ICJ’s binding order in January, in which the court called on Israel to increase its aid and prevent further harm to civilians in Gaza after concluding that “Palestinian rights are 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 Tel Aviv Tribune.
“But in the long run, it could have an impact. The world has seen how Israel kills people and children, and their views on Israel and its occupation are changing.”
“It all began at the Nakba”
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 about 750,000 Palestinians from their land to create the state of Israel.
Diana Buttu, a Palestinian legal expert, said she wished the ICJ had referred to the Nakba to highlight Israel’s historical behavior in the occupied territory.
“While I am pleased with the outcome of this case, I also think that focusing only on the West Bank and Gaza ignores the broader picture of the origins of this situation and how Israel was created, through the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” Buttu told Tel Aviv Tribune.
She criticized the Palestinian Authority (PA), which governs large swathes of the West Bank and represents the Palestinian people internationally, for the way the Israeli-Palestinian issue is generally framed by and within the international community.
She accused the Palestinian Authority of having long since abandoned its efforts to defend the right of stateless Palestinians to return to their former homes and lands lost during the Nakba, or to call 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 Palestinian Authority has long taken a position that this is about the two-state solution and the end of the occupation, so all their rhetoric has been about that,” Buttu said.
Ramadan agreed on the importance of centering the Nakba whenever discussing Israeli settlement expansion and its war in Gaza.
“It all started with the Nakba. How can we not talk about the cause of the problem and the starting point? This is not the right way to deal with a problem like this,” she said.
“We would really like the international community to recognize the Nakba, to recognize all the people we lost in 1948 and to recognize the consequences of the Nakba that we are still experiencing today.”
