On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue a formal opinion on the legal impact of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, Michelle Nichols reports for Reuters.
“No international body can decide that the Jewish people are ‘occupiers’ in their own homeland. Any decision from a judicial body which receives its mandate from the morally bankrupt and politicized U.N. is completely illegitimate,” said Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan in a statement before the vote. In 2004, the last time the court weighed in on the conflict, the ICJ determined that the then under-construction Israeli West Bank barrier violated international law.