Over 50 nations presented testimony to the ICJ on the legality of the Israeli occupation, with the majority offering stirring arguments for Israeli accountability and justice for the Palestinians. An Advisory Opinion is expected sometime this summer.
Some have argued that the ICJ ruling on the Gaza genocide proves that international law is a tool of the dominant, too corrupted by the great powers to achieve true justice. But the ICJ offered a way of isolating Israel, and that is a source of hope.
The evidence for Israel’s commission of acts of genocide in Gaza is irrefutable. International law gives states the tools to stop them from happening.
In a wide-ranging interview, Craig Mokhiber reflects on his time as Director of the New York Office of the UN’s High Commissioner of Human Rights after he stepped down in protest over the UN’s failure to prevent a “textbook case of genocide” in Gaza.
The system of international law affords impunity to the strong, while the weak are lectured on humanity, which they are denied, and the value of the rule of law and human rights, which do not seem to apply to them.
Since October 7, there have been five elements that indicate we may be seeing a paradigm shift in the hundred years’ war waged against the Palestinian people.
September 29 marks 100 years since Britain was assigned the role of Mandatory Power in Palestine. Despite a hundred years of bloody conflict and grief, the international community’s obligation to decolonize Palestine continues today.
“The study is the most comprehensive and persuasive analysis of why the Israel occupation has now become illegal,” says former UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk. “It will be the intellectual and political touchstone on Palestine and international law for some time to come.”
Francesca Albanese’s June report to the UN Human Rights Council says Israel uses physical, bureaucratic, military, and surveillance means to “de-Palestinianize” the occupied territory, threatening “the existence of the Palestinians as a people.”
Israel’s “right to defend itself” is invoked constantly by its supporters, but international law says Israel cannot simultaneously occupy Palestinian land and attack it as a “foreign” threat, or treat those resisting as enemy combatants.