Twelve more countries made submissions on the fifth 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 Namibia, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Qatar spoke at the first session yesterday (Friday), followed by the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, and Tunisia, who made their submissions in the afternoon session.

There were again clear calls for an immediate and unconditional end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Country representatives spoke of the horrors resulting from Israel’s assault on Gaza. Israel was again accused of committing genocide, of violating Palestinians’ right to self-determination, and of creating a system of apartheid that favoured settlers implanted in the Occupied Palestine Territory.

In his submission to the ICJ, Pakistan’s Minister for Law and Justice, Ahmed Irfan Aslam, said Israel had imposed a system of racial discrimination against Palestinians since 1967.

“It is a system that distinguishes deliberately and systematically along ethnic and religious lines between the Palestinian population and Jewish Israeli settlers illegally transferred into the territory,” Aslam told the judges.

“The purpose of domination and oppression may be inferred from Israel’s pattern of conduct against the Palestinians.”

While most representatives presenting their submissions yesterday spoke in favour of the ICJ giving an advisory opinion, the United Kingdom added its voice to those of the United States, Canada, and Hungary in urging the court to decline the General Assembly’s request.

Sally Langrish said the UK submitted that the terms of the UN General Assembly’s request for an ICJ advisory opinion did not allow the court to give an opinion in a manner that was consistent with its judicial functions.

Dan Sarooshi, (pictured below) also speaking on behalf of the UK, said the United Kingdom “respectfully requests the court to decline the request as presently formulated”.

Langrish (pictured below) added: “Should the court be minded to issue an opinion then the United Kingdom would respectfully urge it to reformulate the questions to concentrate on the Security Council framework.

“In this scenario, the court should focus on assisting the General Assembly in supporting urgent progress towards a negotiated solution.”

The UK cited the fact that Israel had not consented to the main points of its dispute being resolved by the ICJ. To the contrary, it had asked the court to refuse to respond to the request, Sarooshi said.

Langrish said: “Over the course of this week, we have heard certain characterisations of Israel’s actions which we don’t accept. We have also heard characterisations of our own conduct and the motivation for it, which we emphatically reject.”

She said the UK firmly believed that a negotiated two-state solution was the only way “to end Israel’s occupation, to deliver Palestinian self-determination, and to preserve Israel’s identity and security”.

Oher country representatives presented reasons why an ICJ advisory opinion was important, even vital.

Speaking on behalf of Sudan, Marwan A. M. Khier, (pictured below) said that in giving an advisory opinion, the ICJ would assume a crucial role in “fostering justice, peace and security, not only in Israel and Palestine but also in the Middle East and beyond”.

Khier, who is the chargé d’affaires at Sudan’s embassy in the Netherlands, said that in giving an advisory opinion the ICJ would assume a crucial role in fostering justice, peace and security, not only in Israel and Palestine but also in the Middle East and beyond.

Qatar’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani, said it was difficult to see how an advisory opinion from the ICJ could possibly harm “a non-existent peace process”.

The absence of a viable peace process only underscored the necessity of the ICJ’s advisory opinion “and a solution based on international law”, he said.

Speaking on behalf of Tunisia, Slim Laghmani said: “Not only has the court jurisdiction to give an opinion on the question posed to it by the General Assembly but there is no compelling reason for the court to use its discretion to not do so.”

An advisory opinion by the ICJ would in no fashion be an obstacle to a negotiated political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Laghmani said.

He said it was very useful for negotiators to be informed by an impartial third party about what they were legally entitled to demand and what they could or must renounce.

Legal adviser at the Slovenian embassy in the Netherlands Helmut Hartman said neither the need for negotiations aimed at a mutually agreeable solution nor the existence of the framework for such negotiations were compelling reasons that should lead the ICJ to decline the General Assembly’s request for an advisory opinion.

Hartman said “further clarifications in respect of relevant legal principles, rules, and responsibilities can only contribute to a solution on the basis of meaningful negotiations, international law, and the rule of law”.

Namibia’s Justice Minister, Yvonne Dausab, said it was because of the history of her country that Namibia considered it a moral duty and sacred responsibility to appear before the ICJ “on the question of the indefensible occupation of Palestine by Israel”.

She said the parallels between Namibia and Palestine were striking and painful. “Both were integral parts of the mandate system established after World War I and, in both cases, the so-called sacred trust of civilization, which aimed to guide these nations towards self-determination and independence, was utterly betrayed.

Instead of achieving self-government, both Namibians and Palestinians suffered the loss of human dignity, life, and liberty “and the outright theft of their land and natural resources”, Dausab told the court.

“Hundreds of thousands of their people were violently expelled from their homes or forced into exile, joining the ranks of the world’s refugees,” she said.

Dausab said Palestinians were enduring collective punishment in the besieged Gaza Strip, with civilians being killed in continuous and indiscriminate bombardment on a scale that was unprecedented in recent history.

“This state of affairs, this hell on earth, represents a stain on the collective conscience of the world,” she told the ICJ judges.

“Civilized nations cannot and must not accept images of children covered in blood with gaping wounds, of men and women crying in despair because of the helplessness they feel.”

Also speaking on behalf of Namibia, lawyer Phoebe Okowa said Israel’s occupation of Palestine was a de facto annexation in all but name.

Okowa said the occupation of Palestine was unlawful under general international law because it violated the UN Charter and peremptory norms, specifically the prohibition on territorial acquisitions through illegal use of force, the principle of self-determination, and the prohibition of apartheid.

The Israeli government’s openly articulated aim was to ensure Jewish Israeli control of all facets of Palestinian life, Okowa said. This, she said, was evidenced by legislation affirming Israel as a nation state of the Jewish people with unique self-determination rights reserved for Jewish individuals only.

Okowa said all states must refrain from all forms of assistance to Israel “including transfer of arms and political support that de facto perpetuates the occupation”.

She added: “In Namibia’s view, this means in particular that all states are under an obligation to ensure that companies under their jurisdiction or control do not trade in Israeli goods or with Israeli companies originating from or linked to Israel’s illegal occupation.”

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi called for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza.

“Israel should also be obliged to make reparation both to the state of Palestine, as well as to the Palestinian people,” she said.

Marsudi told the ICJ judges: “I stand before you today to defend justice against the blatant violation of international law that has been committed by Israel.”

She said Israel’s “unlawful occupation and its atrocities” must stop. They should neither be normalised nor recognised, she said.

Indonesia maintained that the ICJ had jurisdiction to render an advisory opinion, Marsudi said, and there were no grounds for declining to exercise such jurisdiction. “There is no viable peace process to be undermined,” she told the court.

Israel had never been interested in any peace process, Marsudi said. It had been consistently obstructing a negotiated two-state solution and had only been pursuing a one-sided solution.

“The ICJ’s opinion would positively contribute to the peace process by presenting additional elements of the law for a comprehensive resolution of the dispute,” Marsudi told the ICJ judges.

The request for an advisory opinion was not intended to decide on a final solution to the conflict, she said

Marsudi said that, despite rhetoric about peace, successive Israeli governments had openly expressed their abandonment of the peace process, including by declaring the Oslo Accord null and void.

“Negotiation with someone holding a gun against your head is not a negotiation at all, she said.

The Israeli occupation was a result of an unjustified use of force, Marsudi said. It was in breach of the principle of necessity and proportionality and against the prohibition of aggression, “a peremptory norm of international law from which no derogation is permitted”.

Israel had been attempting to make its occupation permanent and to annex part of the occupied territory, Marsudi said.

“No state should be granted a free rein to do anything they want against weaker state,” she told the court.

Oman’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Sheikh Abdullah al-Harthi, said that the world had for four months been witnessing in Gaza one of the worst atrocities and acts of genocide in modern times.

“For more than 75 years the Palestinians have been living under occupation, oppression, injustice, and daily humiliation committed against them by Israelis,” Al-Harthi said..

“Meanwhile, the international community and the international organisations have failed to assist the people of Palestine to realise their aspiration by having their own independent state.”

Al-Harthi said that, for 75 years, Israel’s occupation and settlement policy had prevented the establishment of a contiguous, viable Palestinian state and this was an affront to international law.

“The court should find that the legal consequences for the government of Israel in this regard should include the immediate cessation of all illegal acts, including settlements … ,” Al-Harthi said.

Reparations and the dismantling of illegal structures and legal frameworks were also imperative, he said.

Qatar’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Mutlaq bin Majed al-Qahtani, said Israel’s illegal and discriminatory policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory were “the tools of a long-standing settler colonial project”.

Israel’s policies were designed to promote a single goal: the permanent colonisation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory “for the exclusive benefit of Israel and the Jewish Israeli settlers”, Al-Qahtani said.

This goal was essentially linked to Israel’s oppressive and discriminatory practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and was the root cause of the cycles of violence there, Al-Qahtani told the court.

Al-Qahtani said that, across the West Bank, 397 Palestinians had been killed since October 7, 2023.

Civilian casualties were not just collateral damage in Israeli attacks, Al-Qahtani said. They were the main target.

Israel’s victims are often children, Al-Qahtani says. He cited the case of a five-year-old girl who was shot in the back by Israeli forces on January 7 at a military checkpoint in the West Bank and whose body was withheld from her family by Israeli forces for 14 days.

Al-Qahtani also cited the case of a 16-year-old who was shot in the head as he was leaving for school. He was the hundredth Palestinian child to be killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank since October 2, Al-Qahtani said.

Al-Qahtani also spoke about the “discriminatory military legal system” imposed by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“The system privileges Jewish Israeli settlers, while depriving Palestinians of the most basic legal protections,” Al-Qahtani told the ICJ judges.

“A pillar of the system is the practice of indefinitive administrative detention of Palestinians without charges.”

This practice was already widespread before October 7, 2023, and its use had increased excessively since then, Al-Qahtani said.

“In the past four months alone, thousands of Palestinians have been placed in administrative detentions In Gaza. They are rounded up, blindfolded, disrobed, humiliated, and detained in mass makeshift outdoor prisons,” he told the court.

Speaking on behalf of Syria, Ammar al-Arsan said in his submission that the crime of occupation had been, and continued to be, “the most serious and heinous crime in the history of mankind”.

He said Syria believed that the Israeli occupation in and of itself should be considered absolutely illegal, “and that we should not be satisfied with only and merely describing its practices and policies”.

Al-Arsan, who heads Syria’s permanent mission to the European Union, told the ICJ judges: “The Syrian Arab Republic stresses the need to hold Israel accountable for its grave and continuing violations of the provisions of international law, the Charter of the United Nations and its relevant resolutions and the provisions of international humanitarian law …”

He said that occupation acts primarily on the basis of usurping land by force, which was essentially prohibited under international law and the provisions of the UN charter.

“It also acts on the basis of suppressing the will of the people, seeking to degrade their dignity and deprive them of their basic rights,” he added.

Israel’s practices were the clearest reflection of the failure of the international community to prevent the heinous crime of occupation and to ensure the implementation of the relevant resolutions of Security Council, the General Assembly, and the Human Rights Council, Al-Arsan said.

Al-Arsan told the ICJ judges: “Israel is obliged to immediately stop all its violations of its legal obligations in Jerusalem and all other occupied Palestinian territories.

“The cessation of such violations entails inter alia the dismantling of illegal structures including settlements and the apartheid wall [and] the cancellation or deactivation of all legislative and regulatory acts adopted by Israel with the aim of building illegal settlements and normalising said system.”

Israel was also obliged to make reparation for the damage caused to individuals concerned through restitution and compensation, Al-Arsan added.

“Today we are talking about a huge record of UN resolutions that Israel keeps violating,” Al-Arsan told the ICJ judges. “When it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are talking about 180 resolutions of the General Assembly and 227 resolutions of the Security Council.”

Al-Arsan said that, “in the devastated Gaza Strip, long before the 7th of October 2023” Israel practised racial discrimination towards the Palestinian population in the form of its ongoing blockade.

“We are currently witnessing Israel committing genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip, attacking Syria, attacking Lebanon, and committing war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Al-Arsan said.

One of the reasons that Israel considered itself to be above the law was that it had been carrying out illegal occupation and committing crimes for 75 years without facing accountability or any sort of consequences, he told the ICJ judges.

“Today, it has become imperative for all states to convince or to show Israel, the occupying power,  by all possible legal means, that it does not have a green light to annex more occupied territories, expel their indigenous people, and build more illegal settlements” Al-Arsan said.

Ahmed Irfan Aslam, speaking for Pakistan, said the ICJ proceedings were taking place “as a whole people struggle to survive through relentless bombardment”. These were the very people who had endured daily persecution for over half a century.

Aslam said the ICJ proceedings inspired hope because they afforded the court “an opportunity to develop jurisprudence to advance essential principles of international law that preserves and advances the very basic human right of liberty and dignity”.

He toId the court: “Israel’s occupation is no longer, if it ever was, a military occupation, it is annexation.

“In East Jerusalem, the annexation is de jure. In the rest of the territory, it is de facto, but the formal characterisation matters little.

“To use the words of the court in the wall case, the occupation is today, and I quote, notwithstanding the formal characterisation, tantamount to de facto annexation, and of course this now applies to the entire territory.”

In July 2004 the ICJ ruled, by 14 votes to one, that “the construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, and its associated régime, are contrary to international law”.

The ICJ ruled that Israel was under an obligation “to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall”, to “dismantle the structure therein situated”, and “to repeal or render ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto”.

It also ruled that Israel was under an obligation to make reparation for all damage caused by the construction of the wall.

The UN General Assembly later voted overwhelmingly to demand that Israel comply with the court’s ruling.

The wall continues to cut through and divide Palestinian communities.

Kristian Jervell, speaking on behalf of Norway, said political leaders in Israel had stated that Israel’s aim was the de facto annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

“In 2019, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would continue to build and develop the West Bank. He said that not one resident or community will be uprooted in a political agreement and Israeli military and security forces will continue to rule the entire territory,” Jervell told the court.

Jervell, who is director general of the legal department at Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, spoke of house evictions, demolitions, forced displacement, and settler violence against Palestinians.

Such acts ran counter to fundamental human rights, international humanitarian law, and the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, he said.

Jervell also spoke about “the atrocities committed by Hamas and directed from the Gaza Strip on 7th October 2023”, which he said constituted “heinous and massive terrorist attacks”.

He said repeated rocket attacks launched against Israel by Hamas “and other groups in Gaza” constituted violations of international humanitarian law.

“Individuals responsible for atrocities and other crimes must be held accountable,” Jervell said. “Those constituting real and imminent threats to the Israeli population and territory expose themselves as lawful military targets within the constraints of international law.

“This does, however, not justify any breaches of international humanitarian law, including by inciting or taking measures directed against the civilian population.”

Slim Laghmani, speaking on behalf of Tunisia, said it was clear from Israeli texts and declarations that Israel considered that all the territory of mandatory Palestine was its own and that there was no Palestinian people.

There was a systematic Israeli policy, “namely a clear intention and desire to destroy Palestinians as a national group entitled to self-determination and state independence and to reduce the survivors to a group of stateless refugees”, Laghmani said.
 

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