The ICJ compelled the international community to take action against Israel
A protester draped in a Palestinian flag holds up a sign at a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza outside the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in The Hague, Netherlands 24 May 2024
Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei writes in Al Jazeera on 25 July 2024:
In recent weeks, the Israeli regime has accelerated its attacks on the core institutions and valued representatives of the United Nations in an effort to conceal the truth about its countless international and humanitarian law violations in Gaza and the rest of the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
In addition to continuing with its longstanding policy of accusing the UN and its agencies of bias and even “complicity in terror” for criticising its illegal occupation and supporting the internationally recognised rights of the longsuffering Palestinian people, the Zionist regime also launched a personal attack against the UN’s much respected Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the West Bank and Gaza, Francesca Albanese.
The regime and its supporters baselessly accused Special Rapporteur Albanese of anti-Israel bias, anti-Semitism and financial improprieties merely because she honourably fulfilled her duty, defended a vulnerable population, exposed Zionist atrocities in Gaza, and demanded that those blatantly violating the human rights of the Palestinians are held to account.
Throughout her mandate, which began in May 2022, the special rapporteur tirelessly highlighted the crimes the Israeli regime has long been committing in the territories it illegally occupies, defended the human rights of Palestinians, including their right to self-determination, and supported all her reports and statements with scientific data from the ground and credible legal arguments. She defined Israel as an apartheid state and in a March 2024 report said that Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza amounts to genocide. She also repeatedly emphasised the need for Palestine to be recognised as a sovereign state and Israel to be officially designated as an occupying regime for the human rights violations in Palestine to come to an end.
Her position has always been clear: Palestinians have been living under the Zionist regime’s illegal, violent occupation for more than 50 years, deprived of their freedom of movement and denied access to their most basic rights and natural resources. The international community must take immediate action to end the regime’s apartheid practices and ethnic cleansing. It should enforce international norms and urgently act to defend the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
Israel has been pointing to these stances when mounting its accusations of bias against Special Rapporteur Albanese. However, everything she has stated about Palestine is supported by leading international scholars, prominent NGOs, and recently, were explicitly approved by the International Court of Justice – the world’s highest judicial body.