Two Years After International Court Of Justice Condemns Occupation: Global Powers Failing Palestinians Once Again
By Jamal Juma
This year the 9th of July is a bitter day for Palestinians. The Occupation Army besieges Gaza, massacres its people and
attacks its infrastructure. The ghettos of the West Bank take shape as the Apartheid Wall edges closer to completion and
the Palestinian exodus from Jerusalem has begun. Over 9000 Palestinians sit in Israeli prison cells whilst Palestinians
who remain on their 1948 lands do so under the subjugation of the most vicious and discriminatory Apartheid system.
The brief euphoria of two years ago, following the ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the Wall, is a
distant memory. Some hailed a victory for international law in Palestine when the ICJ ruled the Wall illegal and
condemned the Occupation along with other Israeli crimes. It asked the international community to enforce the IV Geneva
convention and “not to render any aid or assistance to the Wall and the associated regime”.
Two years later, as the Palestinian people prepare to march to the UN offices, they know that nobody has taken up this
latest verdict to stop the escalation of the Occupation in Palestine. The Apartheid Wall scythes through the landscape
as it nears completion, forming part of an intricate system of control with the fortified settler-only roads to steal
48% of lands in the West Bank. Palestinians in Gaza, 80% of whom are refugees from the lands they were expelled from in
1948, are imprisoned behind two Walls. Cut-off from the rest of the world, their privilege after the Israeli sham of
“disengagement” is to starve in the world’s largest open-air prison, subject to continuous bombings, sonic booms and
service cut-offs.
In front of these crimes, at a time when Palestinians struggling for their freedom call for increased ties of
solidarity, the reaction of the international community and member states of the UN is to show their disdain for
Palestinian efforts to shake off the shackles of Occupation. The global community pleads for the release of one Israeli
taken from a tank, stationed outside the Gaza ghetto, whilst Palestinians are taken from their beds and killed in the
streets and half of their government and 1/3 of the Palestinian Legislative Council are taken hostage. They beg for his
return whilst ignoring the 9000 Palestinians rotting in Israeli jails, over 400 of whom are children.
Global agencies confine their operations to fact-finding missions on the “Palestinian situation” speculating endlessly
on humanitarian issues as if Palestine were in the throws of some natural disaster. Reeling off further UN humanitarian
reports are not asked for. Palestinians don’t need to be told by the World Bank about their own poverty and they don’t
need the hollow rhetorical support of governments which fail to follow up words with deeds. The facts on the ground in
Palestine are there for all to see. We need action. We need political pressure on the Occupation. We need freedom.
The manner in which the international community has dealt with the ICJ decision (and indeed with any other UN resolution
including the refugees’ right of return) shows the UN as an impotent and discredited institution where the unity of the
powerful in the Security Council continues to oversee and comply with the expulsion of our people.
The General Assembly resolution, which endorsed the ICJ decision, only asked the General Secretary to build up a
registry for damages and losses from the Wall. The absurdity of building a registry of the ever-rising damages, instead
of preparing concrete measures to pressure Israel to dismantle the Wall is evident. Worse still, the General Secretary
has refused to even visit the Wall, preferring not to provoke his masters in Washington and New York who pull the
strings. And now, it would appear that registry might not complete any evaluation of losses, effectively ensuring that
no reparations will ever be requisitioned from the Occupation. This ensures the criminal doesn’t stop its war crimes,
but moreover, that it will never be held accountable.
While the silence of the international community might be shocking, Palestinians and their supporters are well aware of
the deft machinations of global powers complicit with their Occupation. Increasingly they have witnessed global
government abscond from the responsibilities of international law and pursue the globalization of the Occupation. Now
the international community, together with Israel, places sanctions on the Palestinian people for having conducted the
democratic vote the world asked them for.
They aim to topple a Palestinian leadership which refuses to be compliant with the wishes of the Occupation. With that
goal comes the vision of creating new mechanisms of control to bypass the Palestinian Authority and any source of
democratic accountability to the Palestinian people. The result is the Temporary International Mechanism (TIM), the new
structure proselytised by the EU to ensure political and economic control for the World Bank to rule and subjugate the
Palestinian people. The mechanism is apparently set out to destroy the PA administrative structure (excluding the
Presidential Office) while international banks are to distribute money for the starving. $40 million - roughly a third
of the money made available to create this International Mechanism of support for the Occupation - goes directly to
Apartheid Israel to pay its companies for fuel and other basic supplies. This comes as the Occupation continues to steal
some $75 million every month of Palestinian tax money and from which such expenses were previously covered.
While Israel controls us militarily, confines us behind Walls and carves out our ghettos, powerful global agencies take
over the administrative and financial burdens of the Occupation seeking minimum subsistence for the people imprisoned in
the Bantustans. Any glimmer of hope that the UN, the EU, the ICJ or the “Free World” might work towards implementing
Palestinian rights appears more distant than ever. Latin America negotiates Free Trade Agreements with the Occupation
and Asian countries display overtures of normalization with Apartheid Israel as our people are massacred in the streets.
Our hopes thus rest with the people themselves, to accelerate boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) to isolate
apartheid Israel and punish it for the war crimes it pursues against us. It is our supporters, amongst the millions of
justice seeking people across the world that we look to in pushing forward solidarity actions and restoring some dignity
to international law.
We urge the implementation of the ICJ, we urge the signatories of the Geneva Convention to fulfil their commitments, and
we call for immediate measures to ensure that all UN resolutions are carried out, that the Occupation ends and our
refugees return home. While the World Bank, the United States and the Occupation itself may be powerful, they will
continue to find an unwilling subject in the Palestinian people who stay steadfast to the greater ideals of freedom,
justice and liberation.
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Coordinator of the Palestinian grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign – www.stopthewall.org