JERUSALEM

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized on Friday the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding occupation of Palestinian territories, describing it as “absurd.” 

“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land, including in our eternal capital Jerusalem nor in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), our historical homeland,” Netanyahu said on X.

“No absurd opinion in The Hague can deny this historical truth or the legal right of Israelis to live in their own communities in our ancestral home,” he added.

The ICJ in its opinion said Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land is "unlawful" and should be brought to an end "as rapidly as possible."

It said Israel is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the occupied Palestinian territory.

In late 2022, the General Assembly had adopted a resolution requesting the ICJ to give an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967, how the policies and practices of Israel affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all states and the UN from this status.

Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem since 1967, and has built and expanded illegal settlements.  

Foreign Ministry rejects opinion

Meanwhile, the Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected the court’s opinion, calling it “fundamentally wrong.”

In a statement, the ministry said the non-binding opinion “mixes politics and law. It injects the politics of the corridors of the UN in New York into the courtrooms of the ICJ in The Hague.”

“The opinion only distances the possibility of resolving the conflict,” it added.

The ministry accused the Palestinian Authority, which initiated the move, of being “uninterested in peace, but in slinging mud at Israel.”

Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said the ICJ findings “prove for the thousandth time that this is a clearly political and anti-Semitic organization.”

“We will not take moral lessons from them; the time for governance and sovereignty has come," he said.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the response to the ICJ's decision is to “impose sovereignty (over the West Bank) now.”  

*Writing by Mohammad Sio