ICJ Opinion Riddled with Errors

The advisory opinion on Israel and the so-called ‘Occupied Palestinian Territory’ published by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday is riddled with errors, omissions and contradictions, which effectively mean that it is a gross injustice.

That is something that should be of particular concern to all Christians, for the Lord our God states quite clearly in the Holy Bible that he loves justice, whilst hating robbery and wrongdoing (Isaiah 61:8).

First, judges are required to be impartial (see Deuteronomy 1:16) but the President of the ICJ, Nawaf Salam, is clearly nothing like impartial on this matter. UN Watch published an extensive record of his bias on 18th July, just one part of which highlighted the fact that during his time as Lebanon’s ambassador to the United Nations, Salam voted 210 times to condemn the Jewish state and delivered dozens of speeches accusing “terrorist Jewish organizations” of committing “organized massacres.”

Second, in a dissenting opinion, the ICJ’s Vice President, Julia Sebutinde, noted that ‘the Court has misapplied the law of belligerent occupation and has adopted presumptions implicit in the question of the General Assembly without a prior critical analysis of relevant issues, including the application of the principle of uti possidetis juris to the territory of the former British Mandate …’

So, the ICJ stands accused of misapplying crucial laws and failing to conduct critical analysis. Indeed, many observers have noted that the question put to the court by the United Nations General Assembly assumed that Israel was guilty of crimes under international law. The majority opinion suggested the court didn`t need to engage in a fact-finding process, and yet claimed to find that there was a ‘Palestine’ before the lead-up to the British Mandate, when the British adopted that name for the area.

Third, omitting the principle of uti possidetis juris led the court to miss, or ignore, the fact that according to international law the territories claimed as Palestinian actually belong to Israel.

The court also claimed that the Gaza Strip has somehow been occupied by Israel even after the 2005 withdrawal, when nine months of wartime evidence demonstrate very clearly that the Strip was under the control of Hamas.

But perhaps the most significant error made in the advisory opinion was described by Natasha Hausdorff in an interview with the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs. She noted that “the 14 judges that signed on to the majority opinion put forward a patent falsehood about the information that they had to determine claims by Israel to the territory.” They claimed that there simply wasn`t any information before them. But that is not true because of the number of submissions made under Practice Direction 12 from international organizations and states like Fiji.