Heidi Matthews
This gets us back to the binding/nonbinding part. The court elaborates Israel’s obligations just like in 2004. Israel has clearly said it doesn’t think that the court even had jurisdiction to issue this opinion, and Israel has no intention of complying with it in any way. That was the case in 2004, and it’s the case now twenty years later.
I’m not expecting there to be any positive impact on the ground within Israel. Since this opinion came out, there has actually been an intensification of violence in Gaza. We saw that in the aftermath of each of the decisions ordering provisional orders in the genocide case as well.
What I’m looking at in terms of impact is not so much Israel (although we should be concerned with the way in which the Israeli government claims victimhood based on these decisions of the ICJ and then further supports its right to do whatever it wants to in Gaza), but really for every other state who is a member of the United Nations. This is one area where the work of the ICJ is quite different from the work of the International Criminal Court [ICC], which also has proceedings separately underway.
The ICJ is often referred to as the “world court” because it is the highest judicial body in the UN system, which is the central infrastructure of international law after World War II. In this opinion we see the court clarifying its legal position on some of the most important obligations that states can owe toward one another. These obligations — referred to as “erga omnes” — concern rights that are so fundamental that all states are understood to have an interest, and a role, in their protection. These sorts of obligations are actually owed by each state to every other state.
As such, Israel’s violations of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and its unlawful annexation of large…
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Auteur: Heidi Matthews
