US backs Israeli offensive in Palestine
The US delegation called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to ‘carefully calibrate’ its advice
The Hague, Netherlands - The US delegation on Wednesday backed Israel’s military offensive in the occupied Palestinian territories and called on the International Court of Justice to ‘carefully calibrate’ its advice.
The American representative, Richard Visek, mostly justified, during the public hearings at The Hague, Israel’s military activities in the region, and said: ‘Any movement towards Israel withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza requires consideration of Israel’s very real security needs. We were all reminded of those security needs on October 7, and they persist.”
He regretted that ‘those needs have been ignored by many of their participants in asserting how the court should consider the questions before it’, and that the US position was questioned.
“With respect to duration, international law does not impose specific time limits on an occupation. That said, belligerent occupation is a temporary measure for administering territory under the control of belligerent armed forces,” he justified. “In this regard, it would not, as some participants suggest, be conducive to achievement of the established framework to issue an opinion that calls for a unilateral, immediate, and unconditional withdrawal by Israel. That does not account for Israel’s legitimate security needs.”
Visek noted that the US was more resolved to ‘urgently achieve a final peace, that includes the full realisation of Palestinian self-determination’, following the ongoing hostilities and ‘the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and the violence in the West Bank’.
Despite supporting Israel’s ‘security needs’, Visek also put emphasis on the need for a twostate solution.
“The current crisis illustrates the vital need to achieve this peace, this final peace with a Palestinian state living safely and securely alongside a secure
Israel, fully integrated into the region,” he further said.
Visek also noted that violence and unilateral actions cannot resolve this conflict, and ‘negotiations are the path to lasting peace’.
The US representative, however, called on the ICJ to ‘carefully calibrate’ its advice.
“The challenge for the court is
how to provide its advice in a way that promotes the framework rather than disrupting its balance, potentially making the possibility of negotiations even more difficult. For these reasons, we respectfully encourage the court to carefully calibrate its advice in this proceeding, to support and promote final realisation of peace and stability within the established UN framework set out in Security Council resolutions 242 and 338,” he concluded.
The public hearings started on Monday in the Hague following the UN General Assembly’s request for an advisory opinion
on the legal consequences arising from policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.
Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and the US presented their arguments in Wednesday’s first session.
South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel to the ICJ in late December and asked it for emergency measures to end the bloodshed in Gaza, where more than 29,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7.
The court in January ordered Israel to take ‘all measures
within its power’ to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza but fell short of ordering a cease-fire.
It also ordered Israel to take ‘immediate and effective’ measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip.
‘Illegal occupation’
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates on Wednesday deemed the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories as ‘illegal’.
“The Palestinian people have suffered for far too long under an occupation that is seemingly immune from international law,” Lana Nusseibeh, the UAE’S permanent ambassador to the UN, said at the hearing at the ICJ.
Israel has ‘imposed collective punishment against Palestinian people… repeatedly issued socalled evacuation orders that in effect seek to transfer Palestinians forcibly’ from their homes and areas, she added.
The Emirati representative said the breaches resulting from the Israeli occupation in all parts of the occupied Palestinian territories ‘are worsening at an alarming pace’.
“We convene today while Israel’s grave violations against Palestinians persist with impunity, four months into its military operation in Gaza and following four failures by the Security Council to call for a ceasefire,” Nusseibeh said.
She added that the West Bank is too under an Israeli ‘regime of systemic subjugation’ that compounds Palestinian suffering.
China blasts US veto
The Palestinian people have suffered for far too long under an occupation that is seemingly immune from international law LANA NUSSEIBEH
The US veto at the UN Security Council against a cease-fire has pushed the besieged enclave of Gaza to a ‘more dangerous situation’, China warned on Wednesday.
“China voted in favour of a UN Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza,” said Mao Ning, spokeswoman of China’s Foreign Ministry.
The US vetoed ‘it alone, pushing the situation in Gaza to a more dangerous situation’, she said.