The Palestinian foreign minister on Monday accused Israel of apartheid and urged the United Nations’ top court to declare that Israel’s occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state is illegal and must end immediately and unconditionally for any hope for a two-state future to survive.
The remarks came at the start of historic hearings into the legality of Israel’s 57-year occupation of lands sought for a Palestinian state. The case stands against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war, which immediately became a focal point of the day — even though the hearings were meant to center on Israel’s open-ended control over the occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and annexed east Jerusalem.
Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Riyad al-Maliki told the International Court of Justice that “2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, are besieged and bombed, killed and maimed, starved and displaced.”
Do you think there’s a court somewhere in Europe that has officers that can walk into any nation and arrest everyone in the government?
At the level of nations and heads of state international courts will declare a ruling and that ruling will pressure other nations and those within a nation to act. There’s not an outcome where some Dutch police officer is sent to bring Netanyahu out in handcuffs but such a ruling by an international court might mean some countries consider official sanctions against Israel.