PA said aiming for General Assembly to outlaw Israel’s presence in W. Bank, E. Jerusalem
Resolution adopting ICJ’s recent rulingwould be non-binding but could prompt pressure for sanctions, arms embargoes, TV report says
The Palestinian Authority is seeking to secure a United Nations General Assembly resolution outlawing Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to a report Saturday evening.
The PA is set to ask the GA, when the UN body convenes in New York next month, to adopt the International Court of Justice’s recent ruling that Israel’s rule in “the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967” is “illegal,” and that it is obligated to bring its presence in that territory to an end “as rapidly as possible,” Channel 12 news reported.
The ICJ in The Hague is the UN’s top court. Its July 19 decision was non-binding. General Assembly resolutions are also non-binding, but in this case, there is concern that it could snowball and lead to pressure for arms embargoes and the blacklisting of settlements, the report said.
In its July decision, the ICJ said it determined Israel’s policy of settlement in the West Bank violated international law, and that Israel had effectively annexed large parts of the West Bank — along with East Jerusalem, which it formally annexed and designated as sovereign Israeli territory in 1980 — due to some of the apparently permanent aspects of Israeli rule there.
The legal consequences of its findings, the court ruled, were that Israel must end its control of these areas, cease new settlement activity, “repeal all legislation and measures creating or maintaining the unlawful situation” — including those that it said “discriminate against the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” — and provide reparations for any damage caused by its “wrongful acts.”
In addition, the court said that all UN member states are obligated not to recognize changes to the status of the territories and that all states are obligated not to aid or assist Israel’s rule of the territories, and ensure that any impediment “to the exercise of the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.”
The report said Israel was aware of the PA effort and has a month — until the UNGA convenes on September 10 — to try to thwart it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and numerous cabinet ministers as well as settler leaders roundly denounced the ICJ’s July ruling, with some calling for the immediate formal annexation of the West Bank in response.
“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land — not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said at the time, using the biblical names for the West Bank. “No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth, just as the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested.”
The PA has renewed its active efforts against Israel on the international scene since the war in Gaza broke out on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
In response, Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza with the proclaimed objectives of dismantling Hamas and getting the hostages back.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel said it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle as of May, and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
In addition to using the destruction from the war and the casualty figures in Gaza as a springboard for a renewed push for Palestinian statehood, the PA has also taken Israel to the International Court of Justice and backed the International Criminal Court in seeking war crimes arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has penalized the PA for its efforts, freezing funds from tax revenues that are meant to go to Ramallah and instead giving the money to families of victims of terrorism.
Jeremy Sharon contributed to this report.
