Slovenia at ICJ: Self-determination ‘fundamental’ right for all
Slovenia has argued in favour of the ICJ giving an advisory opinion and stressed the Israeli occupation breaches fundamental human rights, including the right to self-determination. Here’s what its representative said:
- The need for negotiations is not a compelling reason for the court to decline giving an advisory opinion. On the contrary, negotiations can only achieve a lasting solution on the basis of the court’s legal directives.
- A Palestinian state must exist alongside an Israeli state and Slovenia reiterates its support for a negotiated two-state solution.
- The right to self-determination is not “some random right” but runs parallel to the equal rights of people. It is a “fundamental human right having a broad scope of application”.
- The people of Slovenia were able to establish their own sovereign and independent state and believe this right to be an “indispensable pillar of the international legal order”.
- The ongoing Israeli occupation is an impediment to the right to self-determination and the establishment of the Palestinian state.
Sudan argues in favour of ICJ advisory opinion
Sudan’s representatives have focused their remarks at the ICJ on the court’s duty to provide an advisory opinion, arguing:
- The ICJ should issue an advisory opinion to “convey a definitive message to both Israel and Palestine that they need to redouble their efforts to achieve peace and security”.
- The UN General Assembly has the power to ask the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on any legal question. This request has been made in accordance to the UN Charter and the questions are legal in character.
- The court has the discretion to decide whether or not to respond. However, it is an established jurisprudential principle that a request should not be rebuked.
- Israel is not cooperating in the proceedings, but lack of collaboration is often the case in UN proceedings and should not be an impediment.
Switzerland at ICJ: Israel set up ‘coercive environment’ in Palestinian territories
Switzerland has argued in its remarks before the ICJ that Israel has put in place in the occupied Palestinian territories a “coercive environment” that “cannot be justified under security requirements because it affects the well-being of the population and is discriminatory in nature”.
Swiss representatives argued that Israel, as the occupier, has the obligation to maintain the status quo on the territory and protects the well-being of the population. The Fourth Geneva Convention reaffirms the relevance of human rights in the context of occupation, they said.
The occupier might enforce new laws to guarantee the security of the occupier, the order of public life and the respect of humanitarian law, but the measures adopted by Israel in the occupied territories contravene the previously mentioned criteria and aggravate the risk of forced population transfers and the use of lethal force preventively and disproportionately, said the Swiss representatives.
Representatives of Syria have called on the ICJ to issue an advisory decision in light of the many Israeli violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, including restrictions of movement, the application of a two-tier legal system and the consolidation of settlements and other forms of institutional discrimination.
The delegation reminded the court that a “huge record of UN resolutions” that Israel continues to violate – 180 from the UN General Assembly and 227 of the Security Council – testify to its wrongdoings.
The forced displacement of Palestinians and the confiscation of their land in parallel to the transfer of settlers is prohibited under international law. The court should clarify that Palestinians must be able to exercise their right to self-determination and that Israel must remove all structures that prevent this “without delay.”
US prioritising protection of its ally over international law
Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says the opposition of countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom to the ICJ case weighing the legality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories demonstrates their commitment to shielding an ally from accountability.
“The thing about imperial powers like the UK and the US is that they don’t give a damn about the action, in this case, the occupation. They care for the actor, and the actor is an ally, Israel,” Bishara said. “That’s why this court is important, because this court does not see actors. It doesn’t care about the identity of the actor, it only cares about the nature of the act. And in this case, it’s 75 years of dispossession, 56 years of occupation,” he added.
“The UK and the US don’t want you to know the legal opinion of this question, because what they care about is the cynical calculus of geopolitics,” said Bishara.
The US doesn't even care about its own citizens getting killed in the Westbank
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/23/world/palestinian-americans-demand-answers-invs/index.html
The death of Khdour, a Florida-born US citizen, just weeks after another 17-year-old American citizen was shot under strikingly similar circumstances in the occupied West Bank, has underscored the frustrations among Palestinian-Americans who say the United States is doing little to respond to the deaths of their loved ones.
Three weeks before Khdour’s death, Tawfic Abdel Jabbar, a 17-year-old Palestinian-American who grew up in Louisiana, was also shot in the head by apparent Israeli gunmen. The IDF told CNN they received a report that an off-duty police officer and an Israeli civilian shot at a Palestinian “suspected of throwing stones” – which his family vehemently denies – and that the Israeli Police are investigating the shooting.
More than a month later, no arrests have been made in the case, and the family, which has received limited updates from authorities, is wondering why the US government doesn’t have answers.
A number of American citizens have also been detained by Israeli forces in recent weeks. Blinken would not give details on their cases, citing privacy laws. “We insist that people be treated fairly, that they be treated with due process, and that they be treated humanely,” Blinken said. “That’s something that, regardless of where an American citizen might be detained, we insist on. And we’ll continue to insist on.”
His comments did little to convince Khdour’s family. “We don’t need talking, man,” Adnan Khdour, Mohammad’s uncle, said. “We need something. We want to see something.”
The killing or detention of American citizens in occupied Palestinian territories by Israelis and the concerns about a lack of accountability date back years. In 2003, 23-year-old American activist Rachel Corrie was crushed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to block it from razing Palestinian homes in Gaza. Nine years later, an Israeli civil court ruled Corrie’s death an accident.
In the spring of 2022, prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed while reporting in the West Bank city of Jenin. That November, Defense Minister Benny Gantz confirmed that Israel would not be cooperating with a US probe into Abu Akleh’s death. A CNN investigation suggested that Abu Akleh was shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces, despite wearing a protective helmet and a blue protective vest marked “Press.”
“The US has created a situation where Israel, a foreign government, can kill US citizens knowing that the US is not going to hold them accountable,” said Maria LaHood, deputy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based nonprofit organization focused on civil and human rights issues. “It cements Israel’s impunity … the utter lack of accountability has created the situation we’re in right now.”
