The United Nation’s top court filed a ruling Friday that echoed what Palestinian advocates have been saying for decades: Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, including its settlements in the West Bank, is illegal and must end.
The International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion also called for reparations for Palestinians who have lived under Israel’s occupation since it began in 1967, an unprecedented step for the court.
The court also notably declared Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians to be a form of segregation and apartheid. It further ruled that nations cannot offer aid in support of the illegal occupation without violating international law, and upheld the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
While ICJ officials read out their ruling on Friday from the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, Mack received new reports of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In the West Bank, it’s business as usual unless governments have the political will to force both Israelis and Palestinians” into implementing a two-state solution that gives Palestine sovereignty.
Soon after, Israel began to establish settlements inside the occupied territories, supporting Israeli civilians as they built communities atop land taken from Palestinians.
And in recent months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has used its war in Gaza as a cover to expand its settlements at a rate faster than previous decades.
The Israeli government immediately dismissed the ICJ ruling, with a defiant Netanyahu calling Jerusalem “our eternal capital” and referred to the West Bank as “the land of our ancestors,” using the biblical names “Judea and Samaria.”
B’Tselem, an Israeli-based human rights group, was among a host of organizations that welcomed Friday’s ruling after decades of their own advocacy calling for an end to Israel’s occupation.
The original article contains 887 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
The U.S is the primary supporter, and they dont acknowledge courts “they are not party of”. Bush removed the US in 2002.
This is good for the rest of world, and for posterity, but it’s not going to have an immediate impact. The main supporter of isreal doesn’t recognize the court.
It still finally starts to break the narrative that Israel and right-wingers in the US have been spinning for the past 70 years, which has value.
Once that spell is broken there’s no putting it back in place, and as Israel starts being seen by people as just another country it becomes easier and easier for the discussion to be about why the world is supporting them in behaving this way.
We will see it discussed more openly and frankly by our political candidates, it opens the real possibility of getting zionism out of our politics in the US eventually. Sadly it does not help people who are suffering right now, but it’s a pretty huge shift in the perception of Israel and that’s important.