Australian leaders react to ICJ opinion
The Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice concerning Israel’s presence in the territories of the West Bank and east Jerusalem has been slammed by Australian Jewish leaders.
Daniel Aghion
President of The Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Daniel Aghion said: “Nowhere in its 83 pages is there a single reference to the repeated attempts by neighbouring States to eradicate Israel and wipe out its Jewish population, an ambition still openly proclaimed by the present criminal regime in Iran” said ECAJ President Daniel Aghion. “The ICJ glosses over the fact that when Israel came into possession of the territories of the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the course of the Six Day War in 1967, it was as a result of Israel’s neighbours massing troops on its border with those territories and openly threatening its annihilation”.
“In concluding that Israel has an obligation to bring an end to its presence in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the ICJ ignores the lesson of history, which is that unilateral withdrawal from territory is suicidal in the face of enemies who are determined to eradicate you and your country”, Mr Aghion said. “Far from creating a pathway to peace, it is an incentive to further war and bloodshed. This is precisely what happened after Israel withdrew unilaterally from Gaza in 2005. For this reason, Palestinian statehood can only be sustained in the context of a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, not through a diktat of the ICJ or any other external body.”
Mr Aghion also excoriated the ICJ for blaming Israel for the failure of the Palestinians to achieve Statehood. He added: “The ICJ is silent not only about the ongoing rejectionist attitude of the Palestinian leaders towards Israel but also about their perennial violence, corruption and incompetence. One cannot simply airbrush from the record their rejection of repeated offers made by Israel for a comprehensive peace agreement that would have included the establishment of a Palestinian State covering the whole of the Gaza Strip and an area equal in size to the West Bank, together with a capital in east Jerusalem.
The ICJ has been mendacious and reckless In its attempt to rewrite history and minimise the ongoing threats to Israel’s existence”. Mr Aghion concluded. “Thankfully the Advisory Opinion is not legally binding. It deserves to follow the ICJ’s 2004 Advisory Opinion in the so-called “Wall” case into obscurity and irrelevance”.
AIJAC Executive Director Dr Colin Rubenstein said, “The International Court of Justice has delivered a legally pathetic and morally deplorable advisory opinion based on the UN General Assembly’s skewed terms of reference designed to reach such an appalling outcome. The Court subordinates itself to the UN General Assembly, which has a long history of anti-Israel bias. It is important to note that the UN General Assembly is so opposed to the Jewish state that it passes more resolutions against Israel than against every other country combined. Nawaf Salam, President of the Court, has a striking record of anti-Israel bias clear on the record from his time as Lebanese Ambassador to the UN and was ineligible under the Court’s own rules even to be a judge in this case.
Colin Rubenstein
This opinion has nothing to do with law, justice, or basic realities, especially Israeli security, and it disregards even the existential war waged on Israel from multiple fronts. The Court has wildly exceeded its authority in its one-sided, artificial impositions on Israeli society and the majority judgment, although not binding, is a tragedy for Israel and the rule of law and marks a historic point in the decline of the Court.
UN resolutions and agreements such as the Oslo Accords have always required Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate directly the final borders between them. Israel, under the Accords, has offered the Palestinians a state on generous terms three times, while the Palestinian Authority has always failed to negotiate in good faith, refusing each offer point blank and, since 2014, refusing to even talk to Israel.
It appears that in reaching its decision, the ICJ has relied on findings of purported facts provided by the same biased UN that provided the slanted terms of reference. In its condemnation of the way Israel treats Palestinians in the West Bank, the Court completely ignored the very valid reasons for security measures, the need to stop the violence of the Second Intifada, which killed more than 1,000 innocent Israelis and maimed thousands more, and the continuing need to prevent that type of violence recurring. Israel’s security measures are solely about preventing terrorism, they are not about discrimination.
The Court also disregards the constant terrorism that ensued from the Gaza Strip after Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Its demand that Israel withdraw from the West Bank without any security guarantees or agreement, and that it demolish the security barrier, is nothing less than a demand that Israel commit national suicide and leave its population vulnerable to exactly the same type of massacres the world witnessed Hamas commit on October 7.
It is apparently now deemed illegal by the UN Court for Jews to live in villages that they founded and had lived in for thousands of years, including Judaism’s holiest sites in east Jerusalem, simply because Jordan ethnically cleansed Jews from these areas in 1948. This judgement supposedly condemned the acquisition of territory by force but it is based upon implicit endorsement of Jordan’s conquest in a war of aggression against Israel. The inconsistency is mind-blowingly ridiculous.
The Palestinian Authority and its boosters will no doubt see this as a great victory, but in fact, it will only make peace and a Palestinian state even harder to achieve. It will increase the intransigence that has always been the main obstacle to peace. The only real winners from this extraordinary travesty are Iran and its terror proxies, such as Hamas, who aim for perpetual warfare and the genocide of Israel’s Jewish people.”
