While ICJ officials read out their ruling on Friday from the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, Mack received new reports of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.
“In the West Bank, it’s business as usual unless governments have the political will to force both Israelis and Palestinians” into implementing a two-state solution that gives Palestine sovereignty.
Soon after, Israel began to establish settlements inside the occupied territories, supporting Israeli civilians as they built communities atop land taken from Palestinians.
And in recent months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has used its war in Gaza as a cover to expand its settlements at a rate faster than previous decades.
The Israeli government immediately dismissed the ICJ ruling, with a defiant Netanyahu calling Jerusalem “our eternal capital” and referred to the West Bank as “the land of our ancestors,” using the biblical names “Judea and Samaria.”
B’Tselem, an Israeli-based human rights group, was among a host of organizations that welcomed Friday’s ruling after decades of their own advocacy calling for an end to Israel’s occupation.
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