By Ruling against Israel, the International Court of Justice Will Undermine International Law Itself

In December, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution requesting that the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—a UN body tasked with resolving disputes between states—issue an advisory opinion on the Israeli presence in “the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.” This very phrase, which assumes that the land in question is Palestinian in a legal sense rather than territory occupied first by Jordan and then by Israel, both prejudices the outcome and bespeaks carelessness about the finer points of international law. The details of the request only accentuate these problems. Orde Kittrie and Bruce Rashkow explain that the ruling the ICJ is poised to issue stands not only to undermine the very basis of the Oslo Accords and of the court’s legitimacy, but also to do serious damage to the laws of war: