The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will deliver on next Friday, July 19, its opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.” “A public sitting will take place at the Peace Palace in The Hague during which Judge Nawaf Salam will read out the Advisory Opinion,” the ICJ said.
On Monday morning, July 15, 2024, five Palestinian families lost their homes. They woke up by a bulldozer and moments later, their houses were destroyed by the occupation soldiers in Al-Walaja, a Palestinian village south of occupied East Jerusalen. Since 2016, 60 homes have been demolished in Al-Walaja (Photo: Free Jerusalem)
A record 52 countries presented arguments at what is also known as the World Court about the legal ramifications of Israel’s longtime occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in February after the United Nations General Assembly asked the ICJ in 2023 for an advisory, non-binding opinion.
The United States said Israel should not be legally obliged to withdraw from the occupied territories without taking its “very real security needs” into account. It submitted a written contribution, in which it described the questions the court had been asked as “prejudicial and tendentious.”
The Israeli far-right government fears the advisory opinion of the ICJ and the mounting sanctions imposed on entities and individuals connected with West Bank settlements because they will gather steam after the ruling on the illegal Israel’s occupation of the West Bank under international law.
The European Union announced Monday, July 15, that it was imposing sanctions on prominent Israeli racist activists Baruch Marzel and Bentzi Gopstein, as well as several West Bank settlement outposts and Tzav 9, a settler’s organization that has tried to block trucks carrying humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip over the past few months.
The EU announced sanctions on Monday against five Israeli settlers and three entities, describing them as responsible for “serious and systematic human rights abuses” against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Gopstein, founder and leader of the racist Lehava organization, and Isaschar Manne, the founder of an unauthorized outpost in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, have also been sanctioned by the United States, as has Tzav 9.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=31871
