In any normal and logical international context the terms “world court” and “international court of justice” should conjure up a vision of universal fairness, impartiality, dignity, and juridical credibility.
Sadly, no such normal international context exists.
The institution that describes itself as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) can hardly be seen to be anything genuinely international. It represents a motley bunch of predominantly non-democratic states that have taken hostage the world’s only representative international institution.
Nor can the ICJ really be seen to be a genuine court inasmuch as its judges are merely political appointees acting upon instructions from their respective governments, presided over by a Lebanese judge with a record of hostile, anti-Israel political statements.
Similarly, such a political body could not, by definition, be capable of, or expected to dispense any genuine form of justice, but rather to parrot the unending politically-generated clichés regularly spouted by the automatic majority of UN member states in uncountable, unrealistic, and meaningless resolutions.
And so the ICJ is nothing more than another biased and politically motivated UN body. It functions at the behest, and under the influence of a politically driven automatic majority of partisan states dictating their political will to the court and to the international community.
The new non-binding, politically-driven advisory opinion issued by the court, according to which Israel is “obliged to bring an end to its presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,” ignores the fact that both the Palestinian leadership and Israel are committed in the Oslo Accords to negotiate between them the permanent status of the territories.
The court seems to ignore the fact that this internationally recognized commitment to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by negotiation, rather than by an imposed political diktat by a UN kangaroo court, has been endorsed in tens of resolutions of the UN itself and countersigned by the leaders of the international community.
Ignoring the reality for a politically-charged finding
In opining that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are in violation of international law, the court is deliberately ignoring Israel’s long-recognized and legitimate historical and legal claims to the areas. The court is even ignoring the parties’ agreement to negotiate the issue of settlements.
In fact, by attempting to prejudge and prejudice the outcome of any such final-status negotiation, the international court is itself violating the international law requirement to resolve disputes by negotiation.
In calling upon states to collectively act to harm Israel and to prevent and hinder Israel in the exercise of its inherent right to defend itself and to protect its legal and historical rights to exist, the ICJ has relegated itself to becoming one more international Israel-bashing body.
As such it is no longer worthy of any serious consideration.
In absurdly and obstinately acknowledging and giving credence to the existence of the UN-generated fiction of a non-existing, so-called “state of Palestine”’; in permitting itself to be abused and manipulated into playing along with such a fiction; and in allowing such a non-entity to engage its 15 judges, the court is furthering its own lack of credibility, and thoroughly damaging any dignity and respect that it might have had.
The writer served for many years as the legal adviser to Israel’s foreign ministry and as Israel’s ambassador to Canada. He led the team preparing Israel’s response to the previous Palestinian attempt to engage the ICJ, regarding Israel’s security fence. He is a research fellow and presently heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs.