International Court of Justice Declares Israeli West Bank Settlements Must Stop

Last updated on September 7th, 2024 at 06:12 pm

The top United Nations court for international law has declared Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank is illegal and should cease.

In an advisory opinion published on July 19, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded the state of Israel “has an obligation to bring an end to its presence in the Occupied Palestinian
Territory as rapidly as possible.”

The West Bank forms the core of what many Palestinians hope will eventually be a fully sovereign Palestinian state. However, the Israeli government has exercised varying degrees of control over the territory since 1967 and has allowed Israeli citizens to build settlements there.

The decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict has centered around who should control the land of the former British Mandate of Palestine. Many Palestinians currently living in the region are descendants of those who lived in the region back when it was under Ottoman control, and then under British rule after the First World War. Beginning in around the 1900s, the Zionist movement consisting largely of European Jews began to settle in the region, at times claiming a right to inherit the land by virtue of an ethno-religious link to the Jewish people of the Biblical Land of Israel. The Zionist project raised tensions between the new and predominantly European Jewish settlers and the predominantly Muslim population living in the land prior to their arrival.

The U.N., which formed following the Second World War, planned to partition the land in a move that would withdraw the British mandatory government and split the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The November 1947 U.N. partition plan proposed granting about 56 percent of the mandatory land for the Jewish state and about 42 percent for the Arab State, with the balance of two percent consisting of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, which have religious significance for both Jews and Muslims.

The Zionist movement accepted the U.N. plan and cited the partition in their May 14, 1948 declaration of Israeli statehood. But while a Jewish state formed out of the U.N. partition plan, the Palestinians have not achieved their ascent to statehood and full U.N. member status.

The Kingdom of Jordan declared annexation over the West Bank after 1948. The state of Israel did not recognize Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank, nor did most members of the international community. Israeli forces swept through the West Bank during its six-day war in 1967 with Egypt and Jordan and has maintained a presence in the West Bank since.

The U.N. has, for years, called for Israel to leave the West Bank. In November 1967 U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on a resolution, stating fulfillment of the U.N. charter requires Israeli troops to withdraw from the West Bank. The U.N. Security Council adopted another resolution in 2016, declaring new settlements unlawful and calling on Israeli authorities to halt the practice.

The new ICJ opinion again reaffirms international opposition to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The 15-member ICJ held in 11-4 votes that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are unlawful and that Israel must end its presence in the territory. The ICJ held in a 14-1 vote that Israel must, at the very least, prevent and further settlements in the West Bank. In another 14-1 vote, the ICJ held that Israel “has the obligation to make reparation for the damage caused to all the natural or legal persons concerned in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Palestinian Authority welcomed the ICJ decision and called for the international community to uphold it.

“The ICJ has fulfilled its legal and moral duties with this historic ruling. Palestine will work with all law-abiding states and partners to uphold their clear obligations, including to ensure they are not complicit with the illegal Israeli occupation,” the Palestinian foreign ministry said. “No aid. No assistance. No complicity. No money, no arms, and no trade with the Israeli occupation.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, by contrast, rebuffed the U.N. court’s ruling in a July 19 press statement.

“The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land – neither in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu’s translated Hebrew remarks read. “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 disputed.”