Israel’s West Bank settlement policies violate international law, says UN court

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Israel’s 57-year-old occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank has led to a settlement policy that violates international law, the UN’s highest court has ruled.

The settlements “have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law”, the court said in its ongoing ruling.

The advisory opinion being delivered by the International Court of Justice to the UN’s General Assembly adds to Israel’s diplomatic isolation.

But it will have little immediate impact given that the ruling is non-binding, and Israel is already ignoring one from 2004 that declared its separation barrier — which took swaths of the West Bank into Israeli territory — to be illegal.

Israel did not fully represent itself at the hearings. Its ambassador to the Netherlands, where the hearings took place in The Hague, wrote last year that the country declined to answer questions that “reflected a severe injustice and imbalance”.

Israel occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, after wresting control of the territories from Jordan in the 1967 war. It immediately annexed East Jerusalem, in a move rejected by the international community, and has since built dozens of settlements in the West Bank.

The Jewish population of the area now exceeds 700,000, living in walled-off settlements nestled within and near a Palestinian population of about 3mn.

The court said Israel’s transfer of its citizens into the occupied Palestinian territories and its financial and military support of the settlements was inconsistent with international law and the Geneva Conventions.

The advisory opinion, requested by the General Assembly before the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, is one of three separate international legal challenges that Israel is fighting.

This is a developing story