Arab League sharply critical of Israel at UN court

The National

02-05-2025

Israel's attacks against the UN signal that it is not a credible partner for peace in the Middle East, the Arab League's representative told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday. Hearings concluded over Israel's obligations to facilitate humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank after a week-long session in The Hague saw 45 states and entities deliver oral statements. The majority argued that Israel is legally obligated to ensure the delivery of aid and condemned its total blockade on Gaza, in place since March 2, as well as its ban on UNRWA, the UN organisation for Palestinian refugees. Israel did not send a representative but its key ally, the US, echoed Israeli criticism of what it described as UNRWA's lack of neutrality and argued that Israel was entitled to restrict aid access on security grounds. The Arab League took a sharply critical tone. Representing the bloc, international law professor Mohamed Helal said that the lack of empathy shown by the international community to Palestinians was troubling. "The decades of dispossession and countless crimes committed against the Palestinians have led us to wonder whether the people of Palestine are less deserving of compassion, less worthy of empathy, less entitled to justice, or simply less human," he said. He cited the Arab League's 2002 Peace Initiative as a long-standing framework for a two-state solution under international law. "But Israel has consistently failed to seize this opportunity for peace," Mr Helal said. "Israel's political leadership has shown that it is not a credible partner for peace. Indeed, Israel has now launched an offensive against the UN, civil society and other states that have been moved to aid the Palestinians out of a realization that never again is now, and that history will neither forgive nor forget those who stood aside as Israel's onslaught continues to unfold in Gaza and throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territories." UNRWA is much more than a relief agency - it is the instrument by which the UN protects the right of return for Palestinian refugees, Mr Helal argued, echoing statements put forward on the first day of hearings by Egypt on Monday. UNRWA delivers basic services, including health and education, to some 5.9 million Palestinians living in the MENA region, who are in large part the descendants of the 750,000 Palestinians who fled the 1948 Arab-Israel war. "For decades, it [UNRWA] has preserved the integrity of the Palestinians as a people," Mr Helal said. "It prevented their dispersal and forced displacement, and it ensured that they remain on the territory in relation to which they are entitled to exercise self determination." Israel has violated international law since its foundation in 1949 via its conquest by force of Palestinian territory, and again in 1967, laying fertile ground for "repeated infringements of shared norms," said the representative of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, French public law professor, Monique Chemillier-Gendreau. She added that Israel's ban on UNRWA has no legal basis and remains in place because Israel remains bound by the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations. Some 15 first responders — including eight Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedics, six civil-defence members and one UN officer — were recently found buried in a mass grave in Gaza after they were shot and killed by Israeli troops on March 23. In total, some 52,418 Gazans have died in 18 months of war. "The presence of UNRWA and the activities of the agency in the service of Palestinian refugees, that are the overwhelming majority of the population of Gaza, had made it possible up until now to avoid this population being decimated," Ms Chemilier-Gendreau said. "What we are now seeing is, with the prohibition imposed on UNRWA to carry on with its missions, the consequences of the transgressions that the illegal occupant is inflicting on the rights of Palestinians." Earlier in the day, senior Chinese official Ma Xinmin said his country was "deeply concerned" about the killing of humanitarian personnel. Palestinians face no more urgent threat than the deprivation of humanitarian assistance, according to Mr Ma, who is director general of the department of treaty and law at China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. "The desperate eyes of Gaza children peers over conscience with two burning questions: will international law surrender to the brute force? Will the pillars of civilization yield before the law of jungle?" The ICJ will likely take several months to issue its advisory opinions. They are not legally binding, but are viewed as carrying moral weight.