Last month, Saudi Arabia strongly condemned the decision of the “Israeli occupation” to expand new settlements in Judea and Samaria. It also condemned an “attempt” by Israel to “judaize large parts of the West Bank, including Jerusalem.” On October 7, Saudi Arabia blamed Israel for Hamas’ savage attack on Israeli citizens, attributing it to Israel’s “occupation.”
Saudi Arabia also condemned Israel’s Knesset vote to reject the establishment of a Palestinian state. Beware the Saudi intent. The Palestinians have always made it clear that they sought a one-state solution, that is, the total eradication of Israel, “From the River to the Sea.” Each and every time that Israel surrendered land for peace, the Palestinians abused their show of good faith and used their concessions as an opportunity to attack Israeli citizens. The ongoing pay-for-slay program is an exhibit of Palestinian intent.
The Saudis want Israel to agree to a suicidal pre-1967 border pact for a two-state “solution” that will guarantee Israel’s destruction.
“Saudi Arabia, MWL welcome ICJ ruling on Israeli settlements in Palestinian Territories,” Arab News, July 20, 2024:
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has welcomed a ruling by the UN’s top court that Israel’s settlement policy on Palestinian territory breaks international law.
The Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement that the Kingdom welcomed the advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice and called for practical steps to reach a just solution to the Palestinian cause.
The World Court issued the judgment, which is non-binding…
… The Saudi Cabinet on Tuesday condemned the “continued genocidal massacres” against the Palestinian people amid Israel’s battle with Hamas in Gaza.
The Kingdom wants an independent state for the Palestinian people, encompassing the 1967 borders.…
mgoldberg says
From the redoubtable Elder of Ziyon:
Monday, July 22, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
ICJ adopting biased language to make Israel look more evil
One paragraph of the ICJ ruling says:
67. Following an increase in acts of violence from the West Bank, in the early 2000s Israel began building a “continuous fence” (hereinafter the “wall”) largely in the West Bank and East Jerusalem…
Why would the ICJ say a fence is a wall?
For the answer, we look at the original 2004 ICJ ruling against the separation barrier:
67. As explained in paragraph 82 below, the “wall” in question is a complex construction, so that that term cannot be understood in a limited physical sense. However, the other terms used, either by Israel (“fence”) or by the Secretary-General (“barrier”), are no more accurate if understood in the physical sense. In this Opinion, the Court has therefore chosen to use the terminology employed by the General Assembly.
Paragraph 82 does not clear things up:
82. According to l.he description in the report and the Written Statement of the Secretai-y-General, the works planned or completed have resulted or will resuli: in a complex consisting essentially of:
(1) a fence with electronic sensors;
(2) a ditch (up to 4 :metres deep);
(3) a two-lane asphalt patrol road;
(4) a trace road (a strip of sand smoothed to detect footprints) running parallel to the fence;
(5) a stack of six coils of barbed wire marking the perimeter of the complex.
The complex has a width of 50 to 70 metres, increasing to as much as 100 metres in some places. “Depth barriers” may be added to these works.
So a small part was a wall, most of it was a fence along with other supporting features to make it more difficult to cross. (Over time, Israel has indeed replaced more of the fence with a wall as the fence was constantly breached.)
“Barrier” seems more accurate than either “wall” or “fence,” but the ICJ adopted the UN’s biased language as the way to refer to it, effectively enshrining anti-Israel bias in its decision. After all, a “wall” evokes draconian measures to limit human rights, like the Berlin Wall.
The ICJ did the same thing, as we’ve seen, with the term “Occupied Palestinian Territory” that is employs in last week’s decision. Gaza was not occupied before Israel’s response to October 7, but the UN has called it all “oPT” since the 1990s, so the ICJ – instead of correcting the nomenclature – adopted it and then justified it after the fact.
Even the very question the ICJ was tasked to advise on was loaded with anti-Israel bias baked in.
What are the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures?
The ICJ should be objective and reject this biased language across the board. Instead, it adopts it.
Which is yet another reason this is a kangaroo court.
Monday, July 22, 2024
Elder of Ziyon
A silver lining in the ICJ: “Uti possidetis juris” invoked in dissent saying Israel has legal rights to the territories
In 2016, legal scholars Abraham (Avi) Bell and Eugene Kontorovich published a paper in the Arizona Law Review arguing that Israel has the presumptive legal right to the West Bank and Gaza based on the well-known legal principle of uti possidetis juris.
Briefly, uti possidetis juris is a principle, accepted by everyone as part of customary international law, that maintains existing territorial boundaries when a state achieves independence. Bell and Kontorovich argued that since Israel was the only state to emerge in 1948, and the international community never accepted that any other nation (Jordan and Egypt) held legal title on the West Bank and Gaza, that Israel held the best legal claims to those territories under international law unless it voluntarily gave those claims up.
While the argument sounds convincing, I am not a legal expert. As with other legal arguments given by Zionists and Israel – such as the argument that the League of Nations gave legal rights to the Jews of the entire territory of Palestine – I always wonder whether they hold water in the larger community of international law scholars. How much of these arguments are sound and how much of them only appears that way to me as a Zionist myself? After all, no one seems to have even considered applying uti possidetis juris to the disputed territories before 2016 even though hundreds of articles had been written on the topic of Israel’s legal borders in the 49 years before Bell and Kontorovich’s article.
In her dissenting opinion of the ICJ ruling saying Israel’s “occupation” was “illegal,” ICJ Vice President Julia Sebutinde of Uganda writes that uti possidetis juris is most definitely a factor – and, arguably, the factor – in determining who has legal rights over the territories.
70. Under international law there are several principles upon which legally enforceable borders are established, including effective control, historical title, and treaties. Uti possidetis juris is one of the main principles of customary international law intended to ensure stability, certainty and continuity in the demarcation of territorial boundaries of States emerging from decolonization or mandates such as the British Mandatory Palestine. In effect, the principle of uti possidetis juris transforms the colonial and administrative lines existing at the moment of birth of the new State into national borders. The principle applies to the State, as it is “at the moment of independence”, i.e. to the “photograph” of the territorial situation existing then. As the Court explained in the Burkina Faso/Republic of Mali case, the doctrine ensures that:
“By becoming independent, [the] new State acquires sovereignty with the territorial base and boundaries left to it by the [administrative boundaries of the] colonial power . . . [The principle of uti possidetis juris] applies to the State as it is [at that moment of independence], i.e., to the ‘photograph’ of the territorial situation then existing. The principle of uti possidetis [juris] freezes the territorial title; it stops the clock.”
…72. As stated above, when Britain terminated its stewardship over what was left of the Mandate for Palestine in 1947, according to the principle of uti possidetis juris, the administrative boundaries of the Mandate for Palestine on 14 May 1948 became the borders of the independent State of Israel (the only State to emerge from Mandatory Palestine at the time of Britain’s withdrawal).
…73. Israel’s independence would thus appear to fall squarely within the bounds of circumstances that trigger the principle of uti possidetis juris. Applying the rule would appear to dictate that Israel’s borders are those of the Palestine Mandate that preceded it, except where otherwise agreed upon by Israel and its relevant neighbours. Indeed, Israel’s peace treaties with neighbouring States to date — with Egypt and Jordan — appear to reinforce it. These treaties ratify borders between Israel and its neighbours explicitly based on the boundaries of the British Mandate of Palestine. Likewise, in demarcating the so-called “Blue Line” between Israel and Lebanon in 2000, the United Nations Secretary General relied upon the boundaries of the British Mandate of Palestine79. Given the location of the borders of the Mandate of Palestine, applying the doctrine of uti possidetis juris to Israel would mean that Israel has territorial sovereignty over all the disputed areas of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, except to the degree that Israel has voluntarily yielded sovereignty since its independence. This conclusion stands in opposition to the widely espoused position that international law gives Israel little or no sovereign claim to these areas
By using the argument of uti possidetis juris in her dissent, Sebutinde has elevated it in respect to determining the legal borders of Israel. The argument has been largely ignored since the publication of the paper, but Sebutinde ensures that it is now part of the conversation. And there is nothing on the ICJ website that disagrees with it.
—————–
I can only find one serious objection to this argument, written by Ariel Zemach in Fordham International Law Journal in 2019. where he argues that in this case (unlike every other of uti possidetis juris,) the Palestinian right to self-determination trumps the principle because they formed a majority of the population of British Mandate Palestine in 1948. I can see that this argument has emotional weight, but I do not see how it has legal weight; it is a sui generis situation so there is no other precedent for overriding uti possidetis juris with a different principle. (One can counter-argue that if it wasn’t for British anti-Jewish policy, Jews could easily have been the majority of Palestine as they would have fled there from Europe during the Holocaust if they could have. Their rights to self-determination should not be limited by an arbitrary and antisemitic immigration policy that contradicted the League of Nations.)
And even Zemach concludes that the principle of self-determination has nothing to do with the legal determination of national borders. “The bulk of the international community recognizes a Palestinian entitlement to the whole of the West Bank, but because of the lack of Palestinian possession of this territory—a corollary of the status of the West Bank as an occupied territory—such international recognition carries no constitutive effect,” he concludes. So while he might disagree with Sebutinde, he would also disagree with the majority ICJ claim that the entire West Bank is presumptively “Palestinian.”
gravenimage says
+1
rick says
Saudis know there will never be an ICJ ruling condemning the Saudi’s Government of the mistreatment of the entire female population of Saudi Arabia nor the mistreatment of foreign workers – mainly Filipino- who come to work on long term contracts in Saudi Arabia. If the Yemeni tribe- the Saud – did not attack the Hashemite rulers of Arabia before it was “Saudi” Arabia , the solution to the Palestinian-israeli conflict would have been settled long ago as Trans-Jordan was to be Arab Palestine as Israel is Jewish Palestine. So the Saudi rulers together with the British ( the administers of the Palestine Mandate) who simply gave away the entire land of Trans Jordan which is 75% of the Palestine Mandate to the Hashemites for being their loyal allies in WW I. The Saudis are the beneficiaries of getting a country handed to them that was to be Palestine.
bagsgroove says
Arabs are a blight on the world.
somehistory says
The un beast is run by mozlums and those who enjoy tyranny. Its “court” is going to “rule” in favor of tyranny and oppose the fact that Israel has the right to rule its land.
What other nation has everyone else on earth telling them where houses can be built and people can have homes?
What keeps the un beast from telling the U.S. government where it can allow homes to be built, or that there are too many places ruled over by BLM and people are not allowed to live?
What gives the beast the authority to decide that Israel is breaking “international law”? It seems that Israel is the only nation to be targeted in these ways, while other nations’ governments do as they please. That’s *racist* and *discriminatory.*
gravenimage says
Saudi Arabia, Muslim World League welcome ICJ ruling that Israel’s ‘settlement’ policy breaks international law
………………………………………
What Muslims really hate is Israel “occupying” any part of their own nation.