Twelve more countries have made submissions on the fourth of six days of hearings about Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

The hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague are in response to the request by the General Assembly of the United Nations for an advisory opinion “in respect of the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”.

Representatives of China, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Japan, and Jordan spoke at the first session yesterday (Thursday), followed by representatives of Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Luxembourg, Malaysia, and Mauritius, who made their submissions in the afternoon session.

Most of the submissions echoed earlier calls for an immediate end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Most of the countries participating in the proceedings argue that the ICJ should deliver an advisory opinion to the UN General Assembly. Canada and Hungary say the court should decline the assembly’s request.

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Ziad bin Maashi Al-Atiyah, said on Tuesday: “Given the recent increase in bloodshed and destruction by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as well as the dangerous statements made at various levels of the Israeli government, we respectfully submit that the court is under a duty to issue its opinion.”

There were further calls yesterday for the ICJ to state clearly that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal and the court again heard appeals for the immediate dismantling of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

Numerous representatives have spoken about the prolonged nature of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and have described it as an annexation of the territories.

The ICJ judges heard yesterday about Israel’s confiscation of agricultural land and of its exploitation of water and other natural resources in the occupied territories.

Representing Jordan, Michael Wood said: “The Occupied Palestinian Territory has been progressively fragmented. Its demographic composition has been and continues to be altered.

“Settlements and outposts expand rapidly while the Palestinian people’s access to natural resources is denied, and water resources are depleted.”

All this severely violated the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, including their right to an independent state on the June 4, 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital, Wood (pictured below) said.

Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Ayman Safadi, said Israel’s occupation of Palestine was unlawful and inhumane and must end. Israel had been systematically consolidating the occupation, which was blatantly denying Palestinians’ right to self-determination, he said.

“I stand before you today as the evilness of the Israeli occupation of Palestine is being displayed in the bloodiest and most inhumane way,” Safadi said.

Israel’s “illegal unilateral measures” were creating new facts on the ground that were killing all prospects for peace, he told the ICJ judges.

Illegal Israeli settlements were growing in number, Safadi said. “The number of settlers has grown from 280,000 in 1993, when the Oslo accords were signed, to over 700,000 today,” he told the court.

“Settler terrorism is a growing evil. Its victims are innocent Palestinians, their homes, and their livelihoods.”

Israel’s aggression had to end immediately, Safadi said, and those responsible for it must face justice.

“No country must be allowed to be above the law,” he told the court. “Israel is acting, and has been allowed to act, in complete disregard of international law. That cannot continue.”

Safadi said Israel was illegally detaining thousands of children, men, and women and subjecting them to physical and mental torture, humiliation, and abuse as well as violating the rights of Muslims and Christians to freedom of worship.

The ICJ judges were told about the horrors resulting from Israel’s assaults on Gaza and the humanitarian catastrophe that is worsening by the day.

Safadi spoke about the killing of a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who was trapped in a car in Gaza next to the bodies of her relatives.

“When medics finally arrived to rescue her, the Israeli occupation army killed them and killed her,” Safadi told the court.

“This brutality that tortured and killed Hind is a constant reality of life under the Israeli occupation. No more. Rule that this brutality can be no more. Help deliver justice. Rule that the Israeli occupation, the source of all evil, must end.”

Kuwait’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Ali Ahmad Ebraheem al-Dafiri, (pictured below) was overcome by emotion when he spoke about the plight of the Palestinians. Visibly upset, he asked why the victim continued to be portrayed as a killer, why Israel always escaped punishment, and why UN Security Council resolutions were ignored or not implemented.

Al-Dafiri said Israel had waged an illegitimate war on the Palestinians in Gaza “characterised by numerous international law violations”.

The conflict between the Palestinians and Israel was an “illegal occupation conflict”, Al-Dafiri said. It involved, on one side, an occupying power power equipped with all military means and, on the other side, “an occupied nation without defensive capabilities facing daily expulsion, human rights violation, and all sufferings associated with any occupation situation”.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Reza Najafi, said Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories was the longest occupation existing in modern history. Israel’s expansionism had consolidated into apartheid, he said.

Apartheid was a crime against the conscience and dignity of mankind, Najafi said. It violated fundamental principles of international law that were enshrined in the UN Charter and crystallised in international human rights law and seriously threatened international peace and security.

Najafi said the opinion of the ICJ could set the ground for saving the lives of thousands of innocent women and children and contribute to the “legitimate demand” of a people deprived of its inherent right to self-determination.

Najafi, said that, according to one estimate, Israel’s military was killing Palestinians at an average rate of 250 people a day, which exceeded the daily death toll of any other major conflict in recent years.

Hayder Shiya Al-Barrak, representing Iraq, spoke of the “catastrophic economic and social repercussions resulting from the Israeli occupation and its impact on the living conditions of the Palestinian people”.

He said the occupying authorities were obliged to comply with the duty to respect the rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

“They must immediately cease the violation of their international commitments and respect the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination by ending all actions and measures that prevent and hinder the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” Al-Barrak, who heads the legal department of Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the court.

Iraq was deeply concerned about the humanitarian suffering inflicted on the Palestinians throughout the state of Palestine, particularly in the Gaza Strip, “due to the barbaric acts committed by the occupying Israeli entity by airstrikes and rocket attacks targeting civilians”, he said.

“These acts constitute war crimes executed with a criminal intent and serious violations of the laws of war,” Al-Barrak said.

“The Israeli occupying entity must be held accountable for its actions, subjecting it to international criminal liability for violating the principles and charters of human rights and the Geneva Convention related to the human rights during armed conflicts.”

In his submission, Ireland’s representative at the ICJ hearing, attorney-general Rossa Fanning first highlighted his country’s condemnation of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel then spoke of the “spiralling death toll” in Gaza, the extensive destruction of property, the displacement of up to two million people and “the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe”.

He said international law limited the use of force in self-defence to “no more than what is necessary and proportionate” and Ireland’s view was that these limits had been exceeded by Israel in its military response to the Hamas attack.

“Ireland has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and we are dismayed by the implications that these latest hostilities in Gaza may have for the prospect of resolving the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Fanning told the ICJ judges.

He said Ireland remained committed to the realisation of the two-state solution endorsed by the Security Council: “a safe and secure Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, viable, and sovereign Palestinian State, living side by side in peace within secure and recognised borders based on those of 1967, with Jerusalem as the capital of both states”.

Statements by Israel’s prime minister in which he openly rejected the two-state solution had caused widespread international dismay, Fanning said.

“The solution must be built on a foundation of respect for international law, but especially respect for the right to self-determination,” he told the ICJ judges.

“In the circumstances, Ireland encourages this court to provide its authoritative clarification of these essential legal issues to the General Assembly, as requested.”

Fanning said that, in Ireland’s view, the development and expansion of Israeli settlements clearly demonstrated that Israel was and had been engaged in “a process of annexation of that land for decades”.

He said that, by its prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory and the settlement activities it had conducted there for more than half a century, Israel had committed serious breaches of a number of peremptory norms of general international law and the corresponding obligations to which they give rise, including the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people and the prohibition of acquisition of territory by force.

Israel had used different means to take and exercise control for non-military purposes over as much land in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as possible, Fanning said.

“Once in control Israel has undertaken permanent construction on this land, in particular developing or encouraging the development of permanent settlements onto which it has incentivised large numbers of its own citizens to transfer,” he told the court.

“Through its actions Israel has fundamentally altered the demographics of the West Bank.”

China’s representative, Ma Xinmin, said the Palestinian-Israeli conflict stemmed from Israel’s prolonged occupation of Palestinian territory and its long-standing oppression of the Palestinian people.

He said that, in pursuit of the right to self-determination, the Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state was an “inalienable right”, well founded in international law.

Ma Xinmin, who is the legal adviser at China’s foreign ministry, noted that Article 3 of the 1999 OAU Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism states that “a struggle waged by people in accordance with the principles of international law for their liberation or self-determination, including armed struggle against colonialism, occupation, aggression and domination by foreign forces, shall not be considered as terrorist acts”.

He added that during peoples’ legitimate armed struggle, all parties were obliged to comply with international humanitarian law and, in particular, to refrain from committing acts of terrorism in violation of international humanitarian law.

Ma Xinmin said China submitted that the ICJ had jurisdiction over the case in question and there was no compelling reason for the court to decline to exercise its jurisdiction.

“Justice has been long delayed, but it must not be denied,” he told the court.

Legal adviser at Japan’s foreign ministry Tomohiro Mikanagi said his country firmly believed that a two-state solution where Israel and the future independent Palestinian state lived side by side in peace and dignity remained the only viable path for both peoples.

“Japan emphasises that the conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian sides should be resolved not through any violent acts or unilateral action, but through negotiations and efforts to build mutual trust among the parties concerned while respecting international law,” Mikanagi said.

Malaysia’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mohamad Hasan, said that Israel must withdraw immediately from the Occupied Palestinian Territories, annul or repeal all offending legislative and regulatory measures, and offer compensation for all material and moral damage caused by the breach of the right to self-determination.

“As I stand here today, Gaza is facing devastation, including in Rafah at the southern end of the strip. The West Bank is also at risk,” Hasan said.

“Safeguarding Palestine from destruction is crucial, especially in light of Israel’s non-compliance with the recent order of provisional measures of this court of 26 January 2024 in the case brought by South Africa.”

Hasan said the Palestinian people had long suffered dehumanisation, demonisation, and brutal collective punishment and were still enduring the denial of their right to self-determination.

He said the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories violated numerous individual rules of international law as well as each one of the four core substantive elements of the right to self- determination. All of these policies and practices must cease, Hasan said.

Hasan added that all states “must not render aid or assistance to Israel in maintaining the unlawful denial of the Palestinian’s right to self-determination, thus the occupation of the Palestinian territory”.

He said Malaysia stressed the obligation of all states to support the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) “and to halt any financial or military support to Israel that aids or assists in the denial of the right to self-determination and the unlawful occupation”.

The representative of Mauritius, Jagdish Dharamchand Koonjul, who is the permanent representative of Mauritius to the UN, said that, through its illegal occupation, Israel had denied, and continued to deny, the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.

Mauritius was confident that the ICJ’s advisory opinion could make a significant, immediate, and irreversible impact with respect to the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, Koonjul said.

“To those who suggest that the issuance of an advisory opinion might somehow prejudice the prospects of a negotiation, Mauritius underscores that, to the contrary, the court’s clarification of the legal rights and obligations of the parties facilitates rather than obstructs a good faith negotiation,” he added.

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