On July 19, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory ruling pertaining to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Much will go into analysing that ruling, but there is one big question that needs to be asked: how is this reminder of international law, and its position on Israel’s occupation, going to reverberate in the United States particularly, and the West more widely?
The content of the ruling was not entirely unexpected – international law, when it comes to this particular issue, is rather clear, and has been for decades. Nevertheless, it was a reconfirmation of where international law stood: all of these territories are under Israeli occupation; that occupation is unlawful; and it should not be normalised. In the Arab world, and much further afield in the Global South, there was a good deal of support expressed for the ruling, also unsurprisingly.
Of course, Israel rejected the court’s findings, which was quite expected. But an irony was emphatically manifested in how the US specifically, but also much of the West, responded to, quite literally, the “World Court”: by suggesting that its authority, which they say they recognise and respect, does not extend to them and their allies.
This, while ironic, was also hardly surprising.
The US has long publicly expressed support for the “rules-based order”, and international law that is meant to underpin those rules, but ignored international law when it fell foul of its interests and even tried to circumvent its institutions.
Take, for example, the institution of the International Criminal Court (ICC). A Democratic president, Bill Clinton, supported the establishment of the court during his tenure – but the Rome Statute that established the court was never ratified by the US. In the past few years, elected US officials have simultaneously supported and attacked the ICC. When the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin, for example, the US supported its work. But when the ICC prosecutor, Karim Khan, declared he was seeking arrest warrants for Israeli officials (as well as Hamas’), Washington rejected the notion altogether, with US President Joe Biden saying it was “outrageous”. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said thereafter that the administration would work with Congress to essentially punish the ICC, due to precisely these warrants.
Elections are due in the US in less than 100 days. A Republican victory is entirely possible, which would thus deliver not only a second Donald Trump administration but also an administration that would contain a vice president who demanded only a few weeks ago that the Department of Justice investigate and prosecute Khan due to these proposed warrants on Israeli officials. It is a staggering prospect, but one that JD Vance takes seriously enough that he signed onto a letter (PDF) along with several other Republican senators, which accused Khan of supporting terrorism through his “targeting of Israeli officials”, and thus ought to be investigated by the Department of Justice for breaking US law. As damaging as that might be vis-a-vis the integrity of the ICC, it ought to be noted: the ICC is an institution that Washington does not recognise the authority of, and never has. That is very different from the ICJ, which the US does at least recognise.
On the ICJ, the most aggressive responses in Washington, DC came from outside the Biden administration, on the right of the political spectrum. Much like several Israeli politicians, they attacked the June 19 ruling as “anti-Semitic”, but considering so many rights and legal organisations have already come to the same conclusions about the Palestinian territories over the decades, the objections appeared less than convincing, particularly when one considers the wide swath of even European political opinion that expressed support for the ruling. That included barometers of establishment thinking such as the Financial Times, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, and many others. Poignantly, High Representative Josep Borrell noted, “In a world of constant and increasing violations of international law, it is our moral duty to reaffirm our unwavering commitment to all ICJ decisions in a consistent manner, irrespective of the subject in question.”
But there was still a bipartisan consensus of sorts in DC, at the minimum, that the ICJ ruling that Israel had to immediately withdraw from the occupied territories was contrary to the “established framework” for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. That consensus is correct, but not in the way that perhaps it is meant; international law itself assumes a very different framework than what has been taken by political leaders to be the way forward. The real critique, therefore, is really about the framework – not international law and the ICJ.
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