The landmark ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19 calls for the immediate end of Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid rule. This ruling reinforces a clear pathway to peace – based on a sovereign State of Palestine in the context of the two-state solution.
According to the ICJ, Israel must withdraw from all of the occupied Palestinian territory, cease all settlement activities, evacuate all settlers and pay damages.
Ending the illegal occupation is not conditional upon a bilateral peace process between Israel and Palestine. In his declaration, ICJ President Nawaf Salam stated: “[Israeli] withdrawal cannot be conditional on the success of negotiations whose outcome will depend on Israel’s approval. In particular, Israel cannot invoke the need for a prior agreement on its security claims for such a condition may lead to perpetuating its unlawful occupation.”
The ICJ ruling is a vindication of the rights of the Palestinian people, who have endured decades of oppression. It is also a rejection of the position of the United States, which insists on Israel’s agreement on a political settlement as a condition for ending the occupation.
The sovereignty of Palestine, based on the two-state solution and the borders of June 4, 1967, cannot be held hostage to Israel’s apartheid policies. The two-state solution is a matter of international law, not of Israel’s domestic politics, much less its extremism. Diplomatic negotiations, under the auspices of the United Nations, can and should focus on the implementation of Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territory and mutual security arrangements of the two states living side by side.
The US has been a decades-long proponent of a cynical “peace process” between Israel and Palestine that is designed to fail. The obvious truth is that the occupying power, Israel, and the people under occupation, Palestine, will never be on a fair footing in negotiations. Palestinians have been forced to negotiate under extreme duress while Israel has continued its blatant violations of international law.
Yet the inequality of bargaining power has been far worse than the gross inequality of power between the occupier and the occupied. The US has held the cards for decades and has consistently been a dishonest broker. The US political elite is pro-Zionist to the hilt as it is notoriously financed by the Israel lobby (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and others) and deeply entwined with Israel’s military and security apparatus, especially CIA-Mossad links.
The US blames Palestine for every failure in negotiations, even when Israel’s intransigence and opposition to the two-state solution are the obvious, indeed blatant, obstacles to peace. Most recently, the Israeli Knesset voted to reject the two-state solution.
The latest display of the US politics was the reception given to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by the US Congress. Despite – or more accurately because of – the call by the ICC prosecutor for Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes, Congress received Netanyahu’s lies with repeated ovations.
The obeisance of Congress to the Israel lobby was especially vile given that the UN, the ICJ and the International Criminal Court have all recently concluded that the Israeli military is systematically targeting civilians, starving them, inflicting collective punishment and deliberately destroying the infrastructure of Gaza.
A devastating regional war is just around the corner unless the international community acts quickly and decisively to secure the two-state solution. In Lebanon, cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel have intensified. The conflict also grows with attacks between Israel and Yemen’s Houthis. The US could end the war now if it chose. Without American financial and military support, Israel does not have the means to fight a war on multiple fronts.
After rejecting multiple ceasefire proposals, even US-backed ones, it is clear that the Israeli government is not interested in ending the war. Israel’s extremist government wants a wider conflict that lures the US into an open war with Iran. The latest outrage is Israel’s assassination of Hamas’s political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran. This is a dangerous escalation, on foreign soil, that deliberately and flagrantly undermines negotiation efforts and a peaceful diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
While Congress cheered Netanyahu’s lies, the more important story of US politics was occurring outside Congress on the streets of Washington (and the campuses across the nation). The American people, especially America’s young people, are tired of the US government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide. By March, a majority of Americans had turned against Israel’s actions in Gaza. They want the war to stop, not to expand.
The world’s governments are rallying on the side of justice as in the UN General Assembly’s overwhelming support for Palestine to become the 194th UN member state. Palestinian political factions have also joined together, supported by Chinese diplomacy, to form a national unity government. The world community has broadly welcomed the ICJ’s decision to end Israel’s illegal occupation.
A comprehensive peace based on the two-state solution is achievable and within reach. According to the recent decision of the ICJ and the votes of the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council (but for the US veto), the path to peace is clear: Palestine should immediately be welcomed as a UN member state with the borders of June 4, 1967, and with its capital in East Jerusalem.
Peace, in short, is much closer than it may seem, built on the unity of the people of Palestine; the strong and repeated backing of the Arab and Islamic states for the two-state solution; the goodwill of almost all of the world community, including the American people; and the support of international law and the United Nations.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
