John Reynolds
This is a separate type of proceedings to what we have in the South Africa v. Israel case, which is what is known as a contentious case, with one state making a complaint against another. This, on the other hand, is an advisory opinion, which is the other type of case that the ICJ has jurisdiction over. In an advisory opinion process, the court can respond to a request for its authoritative legal opinion on a question from one of the UN (United Nations) organs.
In this case, it was the UN General Assembly that asked the court for clarification on the legality and legal consequences of the prolonged Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The request was made in 2022, so it predates October 7, 2023 and everything that has happened since then in Gaza.
Written submissions were made by more than fifty states and international organizations as interested parties in the case during 2023, and the hearings were held earlier this year in February 2024, just a few weeks after the initial hearings in the South Africa v. Israel case. The advisory opinion is not directly related to the genocide case, which is going on separately.
But there is inevitably some overlap — it’s the same set of judges reviewing aspects of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, so the cases are indirectly speaking to each other. Certain aspects of the advisory opinion relating to the status of Gaza and the use of force will likely inform elements of the court’s own later judgment in the case brought by South Africa. However, the timelines and the core themes are different — genocide in the South Africa case; occupation, settlements, apartheid, annexation, and self-determination in the advisory opinion.
The question that the General Assembly asked came in two parts. It first asked the court to advise on the legal consequences arising from Israeli…
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Auteur: John Reynolds
