The impact of the International Court of Justice ruling this week

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has dropped a legal bombshell which is set to reverberate around the World and fundamentally alter the global response to Israel, which is now nine months into its war on Gaza. In the most sweeping portion of a ruling, it gave just over a week ago, the ICJ found that Israel’s entire occupation of the Palestinian territories that it seized in 1967 is illegal and should be reversed. Just because much of the Western media chose to avoid any detailed study of the ruling, doesn’t detract from its significance. For it was also very clear about what countries must do. It ordered all governments not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” this occupation. This means that those who continue to supply arms to Israel could face sanctions and poses an interesting dilemma for President Biden who this week hosted Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington. Netanyahu, alongside his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant and named leaders of Hamas, also face arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court, although there may be some months delay in their issuance due to a series of last-minute appeal attempts launched by the British and German governments.  Just to add to the pressures on an American President who has appeared both unwilling or unable to restrain Netanyahu’s worst excesses in Gaza, the court has ruled that Israel has imposed a regime of apartheid in the occupied Palestinian Territories by virtue of it’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians. Apartheid features as a crime in the Draft Code of Crimes against the Peace and Security of Mankind adopted by the International Law Commission on first reading in 1991. 

In addition, all Palestinians driven from their homes since 1967 by settlers should have the right of return.

This ruling will make it virtually impossible for countries such as the US, UK and Germany to try, as has been the case in recent months, to ban the ‘Boycott, Divest and Sanctions’ campaigns, particularly so since under international law this is what member States are now supposed to do,officially. It means that other countries in the Maghreb who have continued to trade with Israel, will likely have to review their own domestic trade policies. A good starting point would be to study the moves already undertaken by Turkey in relation to trade with Israel earlier this year. 

The ICJ ruling also gives ground to the UN General Assembly to intervene with a ‘Uniting for Peace’ resolution, which would ask member States to enforce a mandatory sanctions regime against Israel, similar to that which it helped enforce against apartheid South Africa.

The fog of war lifted this week briefly, in between Israeli killing of civilians in supposedly safe areas to the UN announcement that polio was spreading amongst displaced people, while Israel soldiers were being vaccinated against it. It came courtesy of both the landmark ICJ ruling and the possible issuance of arrest warrants. 

It revealed Israel, starkly, as a pariah state. 

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly