.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhbx6iplYNY
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been asked for an opinion. The question put before the panel of 15 judges at The Hague in the Netherlands, is simply put, "Is the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem legal under international law?".
A simple question about a complex problem between Israel and Palestine that began in 1948.
51 countries, along with three international organizations, have sent representatives to The Hague to answer the 'Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem'. Each person addressing the court was allotted 30 minutes to make their case for whether it is legal, or it is illegal.
On Monday, February 26, the very last day of the court's hearings, Dr. Ralph Wilde, representing the Arab League took his place behind the podium. Later, some of the audience may have said, "They saved the best for last."
As Marwan Bishara would later comment, the Arab League has never been very effective, but this time they stole the show.
Dr. Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Laws at University College London. He is currently engaged in an interdisciplinary research project, funded by the European Research Council, on the extraterritorial application of international human rights law, called 'human rights beyond borders'.
Dressed in his flowing legal robe, and speaking in a melodious British accent, everyone watching and listening was captivated by his presentation. He spoke in a dry, legal manner with neither emotion, nor drama. He proceeded to present his case like a surgeon cutting into a diseased body and removing the cancer, and sewing up the incision with tight, neat stiches.
"The Palestinian people have been denied the exercise of their legal right to self-determination through the more than century-long violent, colonial, racist effort to establish a nation State exclusively for the Jewish people in the land of Mandatory Palestine," said Wilde.
"Today I will address, first, violations of international law arising out of the re'gime of racial domination -- apartheid -- perpetrated against the Palestinian people across the entire land of historic Palestine, and then, second, the existential illegality of Israel's occupation of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967," said Wilde.
The global citizenry has watched the conflict through successive generations. Many wondered why couldn't Israel be a non-racist state, where all citizens are treated the same, have the same rights and obligations, and Palestinians who were living in exile could return home?
Israel's greatest partner is the US, which is based on a secular government, with all races treated equally, and all live under the same laws and obligations. Why couldn't Washington, DC. teach the Israelis the formula for success, and an end to conflict?
The UN, the US, and most other nations have stressed the two-state solution is the goal to be met. Others have offered that a one-state solution is more like the American model.
However, the US and UK have been working diligently and systematically since 1948 to keep Israel in constant turmoil and at odds with the oppressed Palestinians who are denied all human rights.
Israel is now considered to be a pariah state, similar to South Africa under apartheid.
"We as South Africans sense, see, hear and feel to our core the inhumane, discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli regime as an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against black people in my country," Vusimuzi Madonsela, South African ambassador to the Netherlands, told the court."
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