Palestinian foreign minister says at a hearing at the UN’s highest court that Israel is putting Palestinians in front of “displacement, subjugation, or death”.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki demanded an immediate end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories at a hearing on the legal status of the occupation at the UN’s highest court that began on Monday.
More than 50 states will present arguments at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague until 26 February, after the UN General Assembly requested an advisory, or non-binding, opinion in 2022.
Al-Maliki accused Israel of subjecting Palestinians to decades of discrimination and apartheid – accusations Israel has rejected – arguing that they had been left with the choice of “displacement, subjugation, or death”. He said:
The only solution consistent with international law is for this illegal occupation to come to an immediate, unconditional and total end.
A 15-judge panel of the UN International Court of Justice has been asked to consider “occupation, settlement and annexation…. including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, as well as the adoption of related discriminatory laws and measures.”
The judges are expected to take about six months to issue an opinion on the request, which also asks them to consider the legal status of the occupation and its effects.
Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem – the territories of historic Palestine on which Palestinians want to establish their state – in the 1967 war and has been building settlements in the West Bank and steadily expanding them ever since.
Israeli leaders have long disputed that the territories are formally occupied, because they were seized from Jordan and Egypt during the war, not from sovereign Palestine.
The United Nations has called the territories occupied by Israel since 1967 and has demanded Israeli withdrawal, saying it is the only way to ensure peace. However, the 1967 resolution did not specifically state that it was illegal. Paul Reichler, a lawyer for the Palestinians, told judges:
The best and possibly the last hope for the two-state solution, so vital to the needs of both peoples, is for the court to declare illegal the main obstacle to that solution: the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine.
The number of people killed in Gaza since October 7 has risen to 28,858, with 68,291 people injured, the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza said on Saturday.
