The UN’s top court on Friday said Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory was “illegal” and needed to end as soon as possible.
The advisory opinion of The Hague-based is not binding, but it comes amid mounting concern over Israel’s Gaza war sparked by Hamas’s brutal October 7 attacks.
“The court has found that Israel’s continued presence in the Palestinian Territories is illegal,” International Court of Justice presiding judge Nawaf Salam said, adding: “Israel must end the occupation as rapidly as possible.”
The ICJ added that Israel was “under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities and to evacuate all settlers” from occupied land.
Israel’s policies and practices including the building of new settlements and Israel’s continued maintenance of a wall between the territories “amount to annexation of large parts” of the occupied territory, it said.
A separate, high-profile case that South Africa has brought before the court alleges that Israel has committed genocidal acts during its Gaza offensive.
‘Extreme danger’
The UN’s General Assembly asked the ICJ in late 2022 to give an “advisory opinion” on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”.
The ICJ held a week-long session in February to hear submissions from countries following the request — supported by most countries within the Assembly.
During the hearings, most speakers called on Israel to end its 57-year occupation. They warned a prolonged occupation posed an “extreme danger” to stability in the Middle East and beyond.
But the United States said Israel should not be legally obliged to withdraw without taking its “very real security needs” into account.
Israel did not take part in the oral hearings.
Instead, it submitted a written contribution in which it described the questions the court had been asked as “prejudicial” and “tendentious”.
‘Ongoing violation’
The General Assembly asked the ICJ to consider two questions.
Firstly, the court should examine the legal consequences of what the UN called “the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”.
This relates to the “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” and “measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem”.
In June 1967, Israel crushed some of its Arab neighbours in a six-day war, seizing the West Bank including east Jerusalem from Jordan, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt.
Israel then began to settle the 70,000 square kilometres (27,000 square miles) of seized Arab territory.
The UN later declared the occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, and Cairo regained Sinai under its 1979 peace deal with Israel.