Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday submitted to the cabinet a resolution rejecting the ruling issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague last Friday regarding the legality of the “occupation regime.” The resolution was composed without input from Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, and the legal opinion attached to it is signed by Professor Talia Einhorn, an expert on International Law and the Director of the Israeli Institute for Legislative Research and Comparative Law.
Following is my translation:
A Declaration Regarding the Historic and International Law Right to the Settlements
A proposed resolution.
We decide:
1. The nation of Israel is not an occupier in its homeland and its eternal capital city Jerusalem.
2. Israel rejects the advisory opinion of the International Court in The Hague, which blatantly ignores the Jewish people’s natural and historic right to the Land of Israel, recognized by international law; the right of Israeli citizens to settle in all the regions of their country; the commonly accepted principles of international law regarding territory that was not held by a legal sovereign; and the right and duty of the State of Israel to self-defense and secure borders.
3. The court’s ruling is null in principle because it is in effect a call to carry out an ethnic cleansing of the Jewish people from their homeland while denying history and the unbreakable bond between the Jewish nation and Jerusalem, Shilo, and Bethel and the rest of Judea and Samaria, the cradle of the history of the Jewish people.
The opinion published by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Friday, at the request of the UN General Assembly, states that the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are contrary to international law and that Israel must end the “occupation regime” it administers in Judea, Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem as soon as possible.
The court’s ruling provides a general context which is remarkably accurate, and exposes its consequent ruling as purely political:
52. In 1947, the United Kingdom announced its intention to complete its evacuation of the mandated territory by 1 August 1948, subsequently advancing that date to 15 May 1948. In the meantime, on 29 November 1947, the General Assembly had adopted resolution 181 on the future government of Palestine, which recommended to the United Kingdom . . . and to all other Members of the United Nations the adoption and implementation . . . of the Plan of Partition of the territory, as set forth in the resolution, between two independent States, one Arab, the other Jewish, as well as the creation of a special international regime for the City of Jerusalem.
The resolution provided that independent Arab and Jewish States . . . shall come into existence in Palestine two months after the evacuation of the . . . mandatory Power. While the Jewish population accepted the Plan of Partition, the Arab population of Palestine and the Arab States rejected this plan, contending, inter alia, that it was unbalanced.
53. On 14 May 1948, Israel proclaimed its independence with reference to the General Assembly resolution 181; an armed conflict then broke out between Israel and a number of Arab States, and the Plan of Partition was not implemented.
“An armed conflict then broke out” is Hague-speak for a slew of armed and murderous Arabs from all over the Middle East attacked the fledgling Jewish state, many of whose citizens had just been rescued from the death camps.
MK Tzvi Succot (Religious Zionism) on Sunday responded to the Hague Tribunal’s decision calling on Israel to leave the liberated territories, saying: “If we say for 50 years that this is a military rule and at the same time treat this as sovereign territory – when your message as a country is not clear, then the world treats it this way.”
Minister Bezalel Smotrich, also from Religious Zionism, declared: “The response to The Hague – Sovereignty Now.”
