The UN’s highest court is holding historic hearings into Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories since 1967. The International Court of Justice in The Hague will hear from 52 countries and three organisations on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The weeklong proceedings come as Israel continues its devastating war on Gaza. ‘Demographic manipulation of the highest order’ Sands now turns to the issue of demographic manipulation, noting that Palestinians have been subject to “a century of dispossession and displacement in manifest violation of their right to self-determination”. He says this is happening in two ways: “First, the forcible displacement undermines the integrity of the people,” Sands notes, saying that between 1947 and 1949, up to 900,000 people were forcibly displaced. “In 1967, a further 400,000 were forcibly displaced. Refugees are prevented from being able to return and forcible displacements continue today – entire communities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and now before our vey eyes on a daily basis across the entirety of Gaza,” Sands says. “Second, transferring another people into the territory of Palestine is contrary to international law, it undermines the exercise by Palestine of its right to self-determination. Yet, Israel declares that hundreds of thousands of unlawful settlers will somehow remain there permanently and forever. “This is a demographic manipulation of the highest order.” Click here to share on social media More from Sands The General Assembly, the Security Council and the Human Rights Council have repeatedly called for the preservation of Palestine’s territorial integrity and condemned Israel’s act as a violation of the right of Palestinian people to exercise their self-determination, Sands says. He then lists some of the ways Israel’s policies have violated this right to self-determination: Palestinians have been displaced between 1947 and 1949 and then again in 1967 with refugees not allowed to return. Israel allows thousands of unlawful settlements to remain. Israel does not allow Palestinians to exercise permanent sovereignty over natural resources, including land, freshwater, agricultural and mineral resources. Israel prevents Palestinian exploitation of hydrocarbon deposits, onshore and offshore. Israel denies the right of Palestinians to determine its own political status and direction. Israel prohibits and punishes political expressions of Palestinian identity and nationhood. Flags are outlawed and attacked. Civil society organisations and political parties are declared to be unlawful. Click ICJ ruling will have ramifications across the board: Analyst Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, has said that the ICJ is not judging whether the occupied Palestinian territories are occupied or not in this case. They are occupied and there is no dispute about it, according to the UN Security Council resolutions on the issue, he said. “Israel can make the [opposite] claim if it wants and it does with huge lies for the last 50 years,” he said. What the court is deliberating on is whether Israel has every intention to prolong this occupation as long as possible to make it a de facto annexation, Bishara also said. “Everything about this occupation looks permanent,” he said, adding that spreading of Jewish settlements demonstrates it. The analyst said the ramifications of an ICJ ruling on the legality of the Israeli occupation would create ramifications “across the board.” Bishara, however, added that some countries would be able to withstand it better than others. He said that the US would throw away such a verdict as “meritless” and “counterproductive” as it did with the judgment on South Africa’s “genocide” case. Click here to share on social media Philippe Sands takes the floor The professor says there is no dispute as to the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people, pointing out that none of the participating countries – and not even Israel – has claimed that the Palestinian people were not entitled to self-determination under international law. “The written statements offer no discordant note to the three core propositions that the state of Palestine advances in these proceedings,” Sands continues, as he lists the three components: The Palestinians are a distinct people. As such, they enjoy the very same rights as every other people, including the right to self-determination, to decide for themselves how they will live and organise politically, socially, economically in accordance with and subject to international law. The Palestinians’ right to self-determination has real and practical consequences. It is not an empty slogan. That right includes, but is not limited to, the right to control their own land and natural resources, the right to be free from demographic manipulations by any third party and the right to determine their own political status, economic development, their own futures. Click here to share on social media Some of Negm’s closing remarks The state of Palestine requests the court to declare that Israel’s discriminatory practices against the Palestinian people are tantamount to apartheid. Forty-seven UN experts have declared that if the occupation is brought to an end, what would be left of the West Bank … would be islands of disconnected land completely surrounded by Israel with no territorial connection to the outside world. Jewish citizens of any country who have never been to Israel can automatically gain Israeli citizenship, yet Palestinian refugees … are barred forever from returning to their homelands. Israel’s practices against the Palestinian people are no less pervasive in their reach or pernicious in their consequences than the institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa. An immediate end to this illegal situation will bestow on the Palestinian people the fundamental rights that they are entitled to by international law, yet they have been so unjustly denied. Click here to share on social media ‘Apartheid exists in occupied Palestinian territory’ Negm says Israel’s policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) meet the legal standards to describe the situation as apartheid, pointing out that victims of apartheid South Africa and Namibia, among other countries, hold the view that apartheid exists in the OPT: First, the existence of two or more different racial groups is present. Second, the establishment of
