Updates

Update 07/24 #02

 

With so much going on, this Update looks at three separate items of Israel-related news that broke during the past week: Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s July 24 address before the US Congress; the deadly July 19 drone attack on Tel Aviv by the Iranian-backed Houthis from Yemen followed by the Israel Air Force’s unprecedented response a day later, and the highly politicised and factually deficient advisory opinion by UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) challenging the legality of Israel’s occupation of lands captured in the 1967 Six Day War.

First up, Jewish News Syndicate Editor and noted commentator Jonathan Tobin reflects on Netanyahu’s speech. Homing in on Netanyahu’s words – that the war Israel is fighting “is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life” – Tobin says that Americans need to internalise that this battle is being waged on their home front, too.“Hamas’s assault was just one of a multi-front war being waged against the Jewish state and the West by Iran,” writes Tobin, and failing to back Israel will eventually bring the war to America’s doorstep, one way or another. To read more of Tobin’s insights, which are equally relevant to Australia and all Western democracies, CLICK HERE.

Next up is iconic Israeli journalist and Middle East commentator Ehud Ya’ari writing on the Israeli news website N12 about the Houthi attack on Tel Aviv and the Israeli response. In his analysis, which we’ve translated from the Hebrew original, Ya’ari concludes that, regarding the Houthis, “Israel… has a front with a distant but stubborn enemy, who shows a willingness to simultaneously fight the Americans in the maritime space, also in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, against domestic Yemeni rivals and in Israel. The goal they are striving for is to add another layer to the maritime blockade they have managed to impose on… sailing to Israel.” Ya’ari notes that the Biden Administration has placed limitations on the US Navy’s response, which thus cannot deter the Houthis – limitations that are unlikely to be removed. For this reason, Ya’ari estimates Houthi attacks will continue. For Ya’ari’s complete analysis,  CLICK HERE.

Finally, in line with our coverage in the last update of a fascinating and informative podcast, we’ll look at some choice excerpts and takeaways from the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs (JCPA)’s Maurice Hirsch’s joint briefing with UK Lawyers for Israel’s Legal Director Natasha Hausdorff on the ICJ’s problematic July 19 advisory opinion against Israel. Recorded some four days after the opinion was handed down, the discussion between Hirsch – who served as Director of the Military Prosecution for Judea and Samaria – and Hausdorff exposes the weaponisation of lawfare that they agree lies behind the decision. Stressing that this was a non-binding opinion, not a “ruling” or “verdict”, based on Palestinian propaganda without any fact-finding, Hausdorff and Hirsch agreed that the worst damage the opinion will undoubtedly inflict is on any potential peace-seeking Palestinian leader of the future. Any Palestinian moderates seeking compromise with Israel, they said, will now be “completely hamstrung” by this politicised opinion that deemed all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem “Palestinian Territory” without any legal basis and in defiance of the Oslo Accords and international law as it is interpreted and applied to every other country except Israel. Hirsch and Hausdorff also urged everyone to read the dissenting opinion by Justice Julia Sebutinde. Those with the time would benefit from watching or listening to the entire hour-long briefing on YouTube here, but to read key excerpts from the briefing, CLICK HERE.

Readers may also be interested in…

• In a critical op-ed, the Times of Israel’s David Horowitz asserts that PM Netanyahu’s eloquence in Washington could not mask his Government’s failings.
• As an insightful curtain-raiser to Netanyahu’s visit to Washington, Israeli political analyst Amit Segal was interviewed by Dan Senor on Senor’s podcast “Call Me Back”.
• In his “Pressure Points” blog for the Council of Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams targets the biases in the ICJ’s advisory opinion.
• The American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka ponders whether a Trump victory in November could bring positive change to US foreign policy.
• The Jerusalem Post’s Seth Frantzman dives into China’s alarming foray into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the form of an almost certainly stillborn “reconciliation” agreement between Fatah, Hamas and other Palestinian political and militant players.
• Al-Monitor journalist Rina Bassist looks at what the likely Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris has said about Israel and Gaza as Biden’s VP, and whether those remarks actually reflect her own views.
• Some examples from the many stories and comments now appearing at AIJAC’s daily “Fresh AIR” blog and on our website:
  • In the Australian Financial Review, AIJAC’s Executive Director Colin Rubenstein writes that Australian multiculturalism was never a licence for ‘anything goes’.
  • Speaking to Sky News, AIJAC Executive Manager Joel Burnie expresses concern about the Albanese Government’s worsening attitude towards Israel.
  • In a separate appearance on Sky News, Joel Burnie discussed Netanyahu’s visit to Washington amidst wild protests.
  • Ahron Shapiro provides an exclusive look into the Netanyahu Government’s apparent silent settlement freeze and how the IDF has been demolishing unauthorized settlement outposts.
  • Alana Schetzer blogs on unreported facts on Israel’s efforts to ensure Gazans have access to plenty of potable water, particularly during the war. She also blogs about another underreported story: Iranians who support Israel.

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Were Americans listening to Netanyahu’s message?

Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS.com
July 24, 2024

What Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his address to a joint meeting of Congress was important. Both Americans and Israelis need to understand that the war in the Gaza Strip is just one front in a conflict with Iran that is, as he rightly said, a battle “between civilization and barbarism.” He gave the best possible argument for Americans to understand that Iran’s fomenting of terrorist wars across the Middle East was a threat to their security. The speech was also a brilliant defense not only of the justness of Israel’s war policy and tactics, but of the Jewish people’s right to live in peace, security and sovereignty in their ancient homeland.

Far more vital than what he said is whether enough people who matter are prepared to listen to that message and draw the appropriate conclusions. And, much like the outcome of the November election that will have a major impact on the future of U.S.-Israel relations, the answer to that question is yet to be decided.

That’s not just because there were many prominent members of the House and Senate who chose to boycott the speech or the presence of angry mobs of pro-Hamas antisemitic protesters as he spoke. Rather, it is because those who have hurled libelous charges at Israel since it was attacked on Oct. 7 as well as those—in the Biden administration, the media, pop culture and college administrators—who have feared to confront or offend them, don’t understand that they are illustrating America’s most crucial problem as much as their incomprehension of events in the Middle East.

The real argument

In this war “between civilization and barbarism,” those who spread the toxic woke ideologies of critical race theory and intersectionality essentially give aid and comfort to the latter. It’s important to realize that the debate among Americans about Israel isn’t really about its military tactics or the advisability of a ceasefire agreement or even if they comprehend the threat from Iran, key as those topics may be.

The argument is really about whether the lies about the one Jewish state on the planet being an “apartheid” state composed of “white” oppressors of people of color will be accepted by the American people. It is those fashionable ideas that have conquered the U.S. education system, as well as much else throughout its culture, media and government that are behind the mobs in the streets tearing down American flags, and waving those of the Palestinians and Hamas. And it is the influence of those who embrace these radical sentiments and their enablers that have created the resistance within the Biden administration to Netanyahu’s war goals.

Timely reminders

Netanyahu had some clear political objectives in coming to America. He was eager to take advantage of the opportunity afforded him by the decision of House Republicans to invite him and then pressure a reluctant Democratic majority in the Senate to go along. At no point since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks has he had the chance to directly address the American people to explain to them the situation Israel is facing and what it hopes to accomplish without the filter of a biased corporate mainstream media.

In doing so, he reminded Americans of the horrors of Oct. 7 that have largely been forgotten in the discourse about the subsequent war that followed and the stakes for Israel in a conflict with an organization like Hamas, whose goals are Israel’s destruction and the genocide of the Jews. He also directly addressed and refuted the false charges about Israel inflicting disproportionate casualties on Palestinian civilians or causing a famine there. Both claims are nothing more than Hamas propaganda talking points that have been endlessly repeated by the liberal press and accepted by the political left as truth.

The main point of the speech, however, was to reinforce support for Israel’s efforts by pointing out that Hamas’s assault was just one of a multi-front war being waged against the Jewish state and the West by Iran. He wanted it understood that the demonstrators chanting for Israel’s extinction (“from the river to the sea”) and for terrorism against Jews are doing the bidding of Tehran, therefore serving as “Iran’s useful idiots.”

The address earned him numerous standing ovations from both Republicans and Democrats who were present and doubtless played well to the national audience that tuned in to C-SPAN and the cable news networks that ran it live.

It also should have done him some good at home. The spectacle of Netanyahu getting another hero’s welcome by Congress and making a record fourth such address (the most ever for a foreign leader) should send the message to the voters that will ultimately decide his fate that the prime minister hasn’t lost his talent for speaking to Americans in unaccented English in a way that no other Israeli politician can.

The image Harris fears

But the fact that so many of those who should have been there stayed away can’t be brushed off by the cheers for his rhetorical excellence.

The most prominent of the boycotters was Vice President Kamala Harris, who chose to prioritize a campaign appearance speaking to a college sorority in Indiana. The political motivation of Harris, who nevertheless scheduled a private meeting with the prime minister for the day after his speech, was obvious.

She was desperate to avoid being seen on television and in photos published afterward sitting behind Netanyahu as he spoke and, as she would have been obligated to do, joining in the standing ovations for his appeals to the common interests of the two allies and denunciations of their Islamist foes. Such images would have been political poison to a presidential candidate hoping to avoid the pro-Hamas mobs turning on her the way they have Biden and ludicrously labeling her “genocide Kamala.” Her goal now is uniting all Democrats, including the antisemitic left, behind her and avoiding the same sort of chaos outside of the Democratic National Convention next month where she will be coronated as their nominee, as there was on the streets of Washington during Netanyahu’s address.

That she and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who also boycotted Netanyahu’s speech) had no qualms about appearing behind Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he addressed Congress in December 2022 and even held up one of his country’s flags, speaks volumes about which cause their party views as the most important.

All in all, about half of the Democratic caucuses in both the House and Senate stayed away, illustrating that the members of the Progressive Caucus—as opposed to the even more radical House “Squad”—in both bodies make up roughly half of those representing the party. Even some of those who did show up, such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, did so only after saying that they attended grudgingly.

It should also be noted that the only Senate Republican who wasn’t there was Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), who was tapped to be his party’s vice-presidential nominee last week. Vance is an ardent supporter of Israel and his vote against the aid package to Israel that was passed was not in opposition to the Jewish state but to the administration’s insistence on tying it to the far larger allocations to Ukraine that he opposes. Now that he is running on a national ticket, his time is not his own, and he must go where the Trump campaign tells him to be—meaning he will be spending precious little time in the Senate until November. But his absence was still an unforced error that will be thrown in the face of his party’s advocates throughout the campaign.

The fact that so many Democrats stayed away is an indication not so much of the way Democrats resenting his opposition to the Obama administration’s appeasement of Iran—the focus of his congressional address in 2015—or that they see him as an ally of former President Donald Trump and the GOP, though those are certainly factors. It’s that the base of their party, the activists and congressional staffers (some of whom staged their own walkout to demonstrate their antipathy to Netanyahu) is under the spell of those same toxic ideologies embraced by the protesters that make them believe that Israel is inherently in the wrong in this conflict.

The future of the alliance

The ability of Netanyahu to rally those at the Capitol to the cause of Israel in such a rousing fashion is partially a tribute to his personal abilities. It is also due to the fact that most Americans remain strong supporters of the Jewish state, albeit the numbers reflect a deep partisan divide with the minority opposing it being overwhelming Democrats. That this is so even after nearly 10 months of nonstop incitement and biased reporting by the liberal media that have often acted as Hamas’s stenographers is a reflection of the way support for Zionism is baked deep into the political DNA of the United States rather than due to opinion about individuals or events.

Still, the cheers from those who were there should not be seen erasing the problems Israel currently faces in the United States.

In evaluating the impact of this visit, both the American pro-Israel community and Israelis need to understand that the anger expressed at the prime minister in the streets, the boycotts and the cool reception he’ll get from the administration is not so much about him. Nor is it really linked to the desire of some Israelis for a ceasefire deal that would free at least some of the estimated 120 hostages (some already confirmed dead) still being held by Hamas, despite the desperate claims of the families of those who were kidnapped by the terrorists rather than Israel continuing the fight until Hamas no longer has the capacity to continue fighting.

Nor is the issue of whether Americans will embrace Netanyahu’s vision of a postwar Gaza that is run by Palestinians who don’t want to destroy Israel, a demographic slice of the population that is currently so small that it must render the idea more of a fantasy than a pragmatic plan. His idea for a “NATO-style” regional “Abraham alliance” also isn’t likely to interest either major party, since Democrats don’t like Israel’s Arab allies and many GOP supporters of Israel would prefer the Jewish state and its regional friends take on Iran without further involving American forces.

The reason why Israel has become a partisan issue with the overwhelming majority of Republicans backing it and the Democrats split on it isn’t about Netanyahu, Trump or specific accusations about the conduct of the war. Rather, it is that more and more of those Americans who identify with the Democrats have bought into the false assumptions about the Middle East conflict being an extension of racial strife in the United States.

The future of the U.S.-Israel alliance won’t be decided by speeches, even ones as good as the one Netanyahu delivered. If Israel is to retain the support of the United States in the years to come, it will only happen if the woke tide driving the libels about the war and Zionism is rolled back by Americans who are fed up with their institutions being captured by radicals.
That Harris fears running afoul of such sentiments speaks volumes about the problems facing supporters of Israel now and in the future. It also demonstrates that the outcome of the battle for Western civilization—to which Netanyahu rightly tied his country’s fortunes—will be deeply influenced by the decisions that will be made by American voters.

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The Israeli attack in Yemen will not deter the Houthis

Ehud Ya’ari
N12
July 21, 2024

Sixty years ago, the grandfathers of the Houthi fighters received military equipment from Israel that was dropped in the mountainous area of ​​Maozam in the Saada Mountains. They then waged a war against the Egyptian army, which came to save the republican regime that arose in Yemen as a result of a military coup.

It is very doubtful whether the Houthis today remember this episode, and whether they do not want to remember it at all.

The recent exchange of blows between Israel and them is, for them, another link in a long chain of wars that they have been waging simultaneously in several arenas since the early 2000s.

The Houthis conducted seven difficult rounds of combat against the regular Yemeni army, and even when there were no territorial gains – they managed to prevent themselves from defeat. With the outbreak of the “Arab Spring” in 2011, the Houthis took advantage of the turmoil in the country to seize more territory and in 2014 they already captured the capital Sana’a.
Then they clashed with the forces of deposed President Ali Abdullah Salah, who in a short period of time became their ally and ended up murdering him.

Later, the Houthis faced for about eight years massive air attacks by the Saudi Air Force and the intervention of ground forces of the United Arab Emirates (with the participation of units sent from Sudan).

The Saudis, who received guidance and assistance from the United States, failed shamefully in their attempt to dislodge the Houthis, suffered missile attacks deep within their territory, including the capital Riyadh, and in the last two years reached an understanding on a shaky ceasefire that is currently holding.

In recent days, the Houthis have threatened to return and launch drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at sensitive targets in Saudi Arabia if it cooperates with Israel and the United States, which is why the spokesman for the Saudi military hastened this morning (Sunday) to deny any connection of his country to the Air Force’s operation in Hodeidah port.

Aside from all this, the Houthis continue to attack ships not only in Egypt’s Bab-el-Mandeb strait, but also up the Red Sea and even north of the port of Jeddah, as well as in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea near the island of Socotra and the coast of Oman. So far, more than 80 ships have been damaged. The volume of goods moving to and from the Suez Canal has dropped by more than 50%, and Egypt is losing huge sums of income.

The American forces stationed in the maritime space, and now joined by the aircraft carrier Roosevelt, doubled the rate of sorties against Houthi targets last month – 26 strikes in June – but they make sure to maintain a pattern of active defense and hit specific military targets and not infrastructure facilities, as it hit Israel at the port of Hodeidah, the port that is both the origin of oil from Yemen and the gateway for arms shipments from Iran.

The Houthis are threatening to try to damage the American aircraft issue, and in Washington there is a serious fear that the Russians will provide them with suitable coastal missiles.
It must not be forgotten that within this thicket of wars the Houthis are engaged in continuous fighting with rival forces inside Yemen, around the cities of Taiz and Marib, and on the front lines against the South Yemeni forces that benefit from the protection of the Emirates.

What began in the 1980s as a spiritual revival movement of a small tribe in the mountains of northern Yemen, swelled to completely different dimensions. Initially, they sought to cultivate a fresh approach to the Zaydi tradition, after the Zaydi Shiites lost their majority in the country.

Despite the deep differences between the Shiite faith practiced in Iran and Lebanon, and the Zaidi faith, courageous ties have developed between the leader of the Houthis, Abd Malek al-Houthi, and the Islamic Republic and Hezbollah. The speeches he makes now once or twice a week are copies of Nasrallah’s statements, only without the militant pathos of the Hezbollah leader.

Israel therefore has a front with a distant but stubborn enemy, who shows a willingness to simultaneously fight the Americans in the maritime space, neighboring Saudi Arabia, domestic Yemeni rivals and Israel. The goal they are striving for is to add another layer to the maritime blockade they have managed to impose on Eilat: the disruption of sailing to Israel on the routes of the eastern Mediterranean.

They publish announcements about their cooperation with the Iranian militias in Iraq with the aim of attacking Haifa and the ships sailing to it. These announcements have so far had no confirmation in reality, but the UAV that was launched to Tel Aviv and aimed at the vicinity of the United States Embassy on Hayarkon Street, indicates the ability they have developed to try to harass Israel in the Mediterranean sector as well.

Despite the severe damage to the power plant and the large oil reservoirs in Hodeida port, it is not to be expected at this stage that the Houthis will take a step back. On the contrary, their army spokesman Yahya Saree hastened to announce that they are ready for a long war and targeted reprisals.

The US Central Command “CENTCOM” has already made it clear to the Biden administration that the instructions given to it so far do not allow to paralyze the Houthi militancy. It is doubtful whether Biden will be able to change the limitations he has placed on the US Navy, and it is not at all clear whether Trump is even considering moving to an offensive approach in the Middle East.

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JCPA-UKLFI briefing on the ICJ advisory opinion

Selected excerpts from a Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs livestream event

July 23, 2024

Maurice Hirsch: What we’re going to discuss, is the ICJ advisory opinion, handed down on Friday afternoon, ending the reading just an hour before Shabbat. I don’t believe that any of this is coincidental.

They know exactly that Shabbat will be coming in. They know exactly that the time that the Jews will have to respond to the decision is much limited. And so on Friday afternoon, they hand down the decision…

Natasha, this was an opinion asked for by the General Assembly about a year and a half ago. They had the first hearings at the beginning of the year, January, February, and they’ve now concluded their work and presented their advisory opinion. So the question that they posed there really was, I’m paraphrasing because I don’t think it’s worth getting into the whole definition, what were or what are the long-term effects of Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories?

And what should everyone around the world do about that? So what did they actually suggest, Natasha? What did they decide when they’re talking about, just as a general, when they’re talking about the Palestinian territories and the occupied Palestinian territories, what are they referring to?

Because I tried to find on a map, where were these Palestinian territories? Where did that state of Palestine ever exist that we could occupy them? What were the, if they’re talking about Judea and Samaria and Gaza, well, what was their status between 1948 and 1967?

Were they also then occupied territories when they were controlled by Egypt and by Jordan? How did they define those Palestinian territories?

Natasha Hausdorff: Well, there’s a lot to unpack just from your introduction there, Maurice, but you’re absolutely right that this is an opinion that was requested by the General Assembly in GA Resolution 77/247, which was passed all the way back in December 2022. It was requested, it was put forward essentially by 32 states, three quarters of whom have no diplomatic relations with Israel, and many of those who don’t even recognise the state’s existence.

So the framing of the question in and of itself was plainly politically motivated.

And you’re right that it certainly asked the Court to presuppose violations of international law by Israel, and it simply asked the Court to opine, to give its legal opinion on what the legal consequences of those violations ought to be. So the starting point that the Court was intended to adopt as a given that Israel is a violator of international law, that Israel has violated in particular the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is extremely problematic. And the question really remained as to whether or not the Court would simply embrace these presumptions or exercise any fact-finding or legal analysis function about the violations themselves that were alleged.

And what we saw was that the Court on the one hand suggested it didn’t need to engage in a fact-finding process at all. It was just making legal assessments here. It then purported to find facts in accordance with information that it suggested had been put before it, repeating a problem, a grave mistake and miscalculation, that the International Court of Justice also conducted in respect of a previous advisory opinion against Israel, the 2004 wall opinion, which was severely criticised for similarly proceeding on an incorrect factual basis.

In that opinion, making an assessment of Israel’s security barrier, it failed to even recognise the reasons behind the building of that barrier, namely the waves of suicide bombings and terrorist attacks that Israel was suffering. And that was all the way back in 2004.

Fast forward to this subsequent advisory opinion and again, we have no mention of Palestinian terrorism. They specifically ruled out events post the 7th of October, or even including the 7th of October rather conveniently. And they proceeded in adopting these false allegations of violations of international law against Israel.

To opine on what should follow, including the evacuation of settlements, read there, the ethnic cleansing of Jews. But you’re right that it was able to do so on the basis of finding this nebulous occupied Palestinian territories that it didn’t completely define, but it did go a substantial way towards it when it called it contiguous. And in that respect, very much seemed to wipe Israel off the face of the map.

Anyone that is familiar with the cartology of the Middle East knows, of course, that the Palestinian-controlled territories, which are controlled as a result of the Oslo Accords in the West Bank, which created the Palestinian Authority with authority in areas A and B. And then subsequently, of course, in 2005, the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza. That didn’t factor so much in the Court’s reasoning or analysis when it purely purported to find that there was such a thing as a Palestinian territory.

And it seemed very much to rewrite history when it did this and suggesting that there was a Palestine before the creation of the British Mandate. And albeit it’s not explicitly set out, this is another big fudge by the 14 justices and the majority of the Court. It suggested, I think, through that tracing of its revisionist history, that there was a Palestine before the British Mandate, which might in some way be regarded as Palestinian territory.

And it is opined essentially on that alternative factual basis. So many problems with the way that it has approached certainly the factual matrix, but separately its purported application of international law has made leaps and bounds on accepted international legal frameworks, in particular, the framework of the law of occupation. It seems to purport to suggest that occupation has in some way applied to Gaza, even after the 2005 withdrawal, albeit the analysis for this is sorely lacking in the context of the majority’s decision or the opinion that it’s put forward.

But we also see, I think, very worrying omissions. Omissions as to fundamental aspects of the analysis of the status of the territory, something that is remarked upon, I have to say, in an admirable, extremely detailed, robust dissenting opinion by the Vice President of the Court, Julia Sebutinde, who also factors into her own analysis, the doctrine, the rule of customary international law, of opino juris, which is integral, central to analysis of the very status of the territory that this opinion is said to attach to.

Maurice Hirsch: Explain that, I apologise, Natasha. Explain that principle to our audience. It’s fundamental to understanding what, because it really encompasses where are Israel’s borders, as opposed to any other state. And really, that principle is part of the fundamentals…

Natasha Hausdorff: Certainly. This is a rule of customary international law that developed over many, many years. It was recognised by the International Court of Justice as having emerged after it was first applied in the 19th century in South America at the withdrawal of the Spanish.

It was applied there to avoid a vacuum occurring at the withdrawal of the colonial power, or a terra nullis, as the court referred to it. It was later applied in Asia and in Africa, and at the dissolution of all the communist federations. And it was also applied in the context of states emerging from mandates.

And this is something that Judge Sebutinde refers to explicitly in her dissenting opinion, that this is the rule that applied by default to states that were coming out of a colonial entity. And the rule states that the newly emerging state inherits the pre-existing administrative lines of whatever unit as its internationally recognised borders, bar any agreement to the contrary. The rule was said to have developed out of a need to provide stability and certainty, and to avoid fratricidal struggles between states.

There is no argument that I have seen advanced in the last ten years that I’ve been dealing with this issue, to explain why it, for some reason, oughtn’t to apply to the creation of the State of Israel. This was a state that was declared by David Ben-Gurion on the 14th of May, 1948, at the withdrawal of the British from the Mandate. It was the only state to emerge from the Mandate.

And under this rule, it inherited the pre-existing administrative lines that included Gaza, in terms of the border with Egypt, and it also included east Jerusalem and the West Bank, Judea and Samaria, in terms of the border with Jordan. Now that’s significant because it speaks to the underlying status of the territory. What happened then, of course, immediately after Israel declared independence, was a war of annihilation was waged against it by neighbouring states and the local Arab population, and Jordan occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank, and ethnically cleansed it of its Jews, and likewise, Egypt occupied Gaza.

When Israel recovers that territory in 1967, this is another war of annihilation that was waged against Israel, but the Court simply refers to the fact that war broke out in 1967 spontaneously. Another rewriting of history, if you will. But in the course of that war that Israel fought again for its existence, it recovered east Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan and Gaza from Egypt.

Now, one fundamental principle of international law is its equal application. You cannot have a general rule and then an exception for countries that you don’t like very much, or you have some ideological or political opposition to. This universal rule of customary international law dictates that Israel recovered its underlying sovereign territory from those states that attacked it.

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Natasha Hausdorff: [I would] say from the international community’s perspective, the fact that this opinion has passed without international outcry, that their own efforts to secure negotiations and the supposed negotiated solution here [i.e., the Olso Accords and the related peace process] have been completely trashed by the Court…

Maurice Hirsch: So, I think that what you’ve just now pointed to, Natasha, is probably, I think, the longest-standing and most offensive part of the decision made by the Court. If I were to put myself into the shoes of any future Palestinian leader, let’s put Mahmoud Abbas aside, how could he ever come to his people and say, I’ve come to an agreement to a negotiated settlement with Israel that doesn’t include everything that was just given to him by the Court, a complete ethnic cleansing of Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, Gaza, everything else. That is what the Court just did.

The Court, I think, not only instructed Israel what to do, but has now completely handcuffed any Palestinian leadership into a position that even for them is untenable, that they’ll never be able to realise. But on the other hand, they have their own political base to support, their own people to explain their decisions to. And well, the Court gave us everything in the same way as UNRWA for the last 75, 76 years has promised, falsely promised, the return of all of the now 6 million-plus refugees to Israel to destroy it.

This decision, I think, will be waved by every single Palestinian leader as saying, you know what? Firstly, even when we did negotiate with Israel, the Court came along and said, you have no standing to relinquish any of these inalienable rights. And even if you did agree, we’re negating those agreements.

And secondly, this is all yours and you cannot give up on any one centimetre of it. Now that’s more akin to the charter of Hamas rather than it is to an international legal establishment. But really, that’s what the Court said.

Never mind what they said to Israel. Never mind the bulldozing of international law. What they just did really is to completely bind almost forever any potential Palestinian leadership.

Natasha Hausdorff: I think that analysis is spot on, despite the fact that this is not an opinion that has binding force in international law. It’s extremely powerful in binding and hamstringing the Palestinian leadership. So even if, and Abbas now in his 19th year of a four-year term, ultimately will be replaced.

Even if there were to follow an individual that actually, for the first time in the history of the Palestinian leadership, wished to engage in good faith negotiations, wished to come to some sort of solution. I think you’re absolutely right. They are completely hamstrung by what we have seen handed down on [July 19].