Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory: With UN deadline expired, all states must act
Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory: With UN deadline expired, all states must act
On Thursday, a deadline set by the UN General Assembly for Israel to terminate its occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, expired.
It was set a year earlier, after the landmark 2024 advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which affirmed a profound shift in approach to the question of the legality of the occupation.
The court ruled that the Israeli occupation is illegal not only in its conduct, but also in its very existence. It violates both the legal right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, and the legal prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force.
As a result, the ICJ noted, it must end as rapidly as possible. The UN General Assembly endorsed the ruling, giving Israel a year to comply with the duty to withdraw.
But as that deadline expires, the occupation is even more entrenched and abusive, amid a genocide in Gaza, expansions in settlements and settler violence in the West Bank, and Israeli plans to declare the annexation of more territory beyond East Jerusalem.
However, the court and the UN General Assembly did not only address Israel. They also affirmed the special legal obligations of all other states to suppress Israel’s violations of international law in maintaining the occupation.
These obligations are entirely separate from the duties they also have to suppress Israel’s discriminatory, abusive and genocidal treatment of the Palestinian people. They are also more fundamental and wide ranging, since they concern the occupation in and of itself, as a general matter.
What states must do
Legally, states must do three things. First, they must take all steps within their power to bring the occupation to an end. This requires full-spectrum sanctions against Israel, and against individual Israelis.
Second, they must not recognise the occupation as lawful.
And third, they must not aid or assist Israel in maintaining the occupation.
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The links between the Israeli presence in the occupied Palestinian territory, on the one hand, and so-called Israel proper, on the other - economic, societal, military, tourism, educational, cultural and more - are multifaceted and inextricable. It is thus impossible to disaggregate relations with the Israeli state and Israeli private actors to identify discrete matters not linked to the occupation.
Consequently, implementing the suppression obligations requires states to address Israel as a general matter.
In terms of arms and intelligence sharing, states must not provide any support to Israel whatsoever. It is not enough only to halt support that might be used to commit serious violations of the legal rules regulating the conduct of the occupation - such as torture, apartheid, grave breaches of the laws of war, crimes against humanity and genocide - since any and all support provided to Israel props up the existence of the occupation, one way or another.
Likewise, given the inextricable links between the economic dimensions of Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory and the Israeli economy more generally, states must adopt a total trade embargo against Israel - including, but not limited to, an embargo on settlement products.
Despite last year’s ICJ ruling and its endorsement by the UN General Assembly, many states still behave seemingly in denial of these fundamental legal issues: both the existential illegality of the occupation, and what that means for their behaviour.
Even the current focus on the Gaza genocide - while vital - if conducted in isolation from the bigger picture, ignores the fact that even without Israel’s ongoing legal breaches in its conduct of the occupation, its very presence as an occupier would still be a fundamental breach in and of itself. States would thus still bear the legal duty to bring this presence to an end.
What is needed is a profound shift of emphasis. Instead of criticising as illegal certain conduct only (such as the lack of adequate aid provision in Gaza, or settlement expansion, settler violence and home demolitions in the West Bank), states must also criticise as illegal the occupation itself.
It is not enough to insist that Israel is not sovereign in, and cannot claim
sovereignty over, Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. States must also not recognise as valid any other justifications Israel might make for its presence in any part of this Palestinian territory, including the assertion of self-defence. Any state accepting that Israel has a right to be present there on the basis of a right to self-defence breaches the duty of non-recognition.
The time is long overdue for all states to face up to the exceptional character of Israel’s violations of fundamental legal obligations in maintaining its presence in the occupied Palestinian territory - and the exceptional legal duty they have to suppress these violations.
Legally, they are not disinterested bystanders, free to pick and choose whether and to what extent they address the illegality of Israel’s presence. They are required to act, and to do so comprehensively. There is an urgent legal duty to depart from partial, selective and symbolic gestures and statements, to concrete, effective and all-encompassing action.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
