Israel slams UN court hearing on legality of occupation as ‘media circus’

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) - Israel on Monday slammed a trial at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on the legal consequences of the decades-long Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories as a “media circus.”

In a statement, the Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) of “hurling false accusations” during the ICJ trial.

“The Court should refrain from participating in this media circus and determine that the Palestinians should return to the existing legal frameworks in order to resolve the conflict through direct negotiations between the parties,” the statement said.

It said the PA is “trying to turn a conflict that should be resolved through direct negotiations and without external impositions into a one-sided and improper legal process designed to adopt an extremist and distorted narrative.”

The ministry claimed that the Ramallah-based authority has rejected direct negotiations to resolve the conflict and accused it of "fostering incitement to terrorism [and] promoting antisemitism."

There was no comment yet from the PA on the Israeli accusations.

Early Monday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki urged the Hague-based court to terminate the Israeli occupation and deem it "illegal."

"We call upon the ICJ to declare the Israeli occupation illegal and emphasize the necessity of ending it immediately and unconditionally," al-Maliki said during a hearing session.

In Dec. 2022, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the World Court to give an advisory or nonbinding opinion on Israel’s 57-year occupation of Palestinian territories.

At least 50 countries will present their arguments regarding the legality of the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories, according to the court.

Israel is also accused of genocide at the ICJ, which issued an interim ruling in January ordering Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian group Hamas. The ensuing Israeli attacks have killed nearly 29,100 and caused mass destruction and shortages of necessities, while less than 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The Israeli war on Gaza has pushed 85% of the territory's population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

*Writing by Ahmed Asmar in Ankara