International Court of Maljustice

[aggienaut]

   As you may or may not have noticed I was out of contact with the world and generally delirious for two days straight earlier in the week. If you happened to check my away messege you would have noticed it was rambling aobut the International Court of Justice. Incidentalyl during that time my computer crashed and burned three times.

   If you are truly an enlightened person, you may also recall my previous rant about the ICJ.

   I had to do an oral presentation for my UN summer session class, so I chose the ICJ. These past two days I was working on that report. A majority of this time was spent reading the 64 page ruling on the Israeli Security Wall in its entirity. Incidentally one can also listen to chief justice Shi Jiuyong READ the 64 page ruling, which takes two and a half hours, and will probably put you to sleep, it actually put me to sleep.


   Again let me disclaim, that my objections to their ruling is not based on a political affinity for the wall, but on the 64 pages of absolute ridiculousness that is their ruling.
   I'll spare you my more thorough indictment and just highlight my main points of concern:


   (1) First and foremost, Israel was not present to defend itself. They get around this by saying that it is not a case brought up against Israel, but a nonbinding "advisory opinion" that the UN General Assembly asked for. Nevertheless the sweeping condemnations of Isreal that they came up with will be used to persecute Israel just as much as if the case had been "binding." And whether or not the case was explicitly brought up in the context of a case against Israel, its a well established feature of western law that a party cannot be held liable (that is, to be potentially condemned, punished or penalized) if it can not legally represent itself in defense. This is the test of jurisdiction.

   (2) Even though neither Israel nor Palestine is a party to the so-called Fourth Geneva Convention (Treatment of civilians in war and occupied territories), they hold that Israel is in fact bound to it and committing illegal operations by behaving contrary to it, such that individual persons should stand trial for war crimes for issues specific to the fourth Geneva convention, specifically, forcibly changing the demographics of an occupied territory.
   Now see, I'm actually not opposed to the finding that a state may be liable for a humanitarian treaty they didn't sign, BUT if one is to allow that (A) it should be a thoroughly studied and final revelation of a ruling, something of this significance in precedent should be the main subject of a case, (B) no law should be retroactive, if they find this revelation to be true they should say "we find that from now on every state must abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention," but in fact they only and specifically say "we find Israel must abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention" (which to me just reeks of a miscarriage of justice in favour of persecuting Israel; no law should be singular and specific to the entity it applies to), and the expectation of adhering to the convention will follow from then on but NOT apply to behavior previous to the precedent.

   (3) They alternate between treating Palestine as a part of Israel when doing so makes it convenient for them to condemn Israel, and as a foreign state when they can condemn Israel for violations in inter-state matters. No matter what you're feelings on the matter, Palestine is NOT legally a state, and can not legally be treated as one. And even THEN, it needs to be treated consistently as either a part of Israel or an occupied territoy, not just throughout the ruling, but in all ICJ rulings unless they consciously decide to change their legal treatment of Palestine in which case it should be thoroughly explained and consistently carried out.

   (4) There clearly is no precedent anywhere in their writings that building a barrier wall is an illegal act. The closest they come is that it appears there may be an argument that the general pattern of Israeli behavior is in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention (if you consider Palestine an occupied territory not of the Israeli state) in that the movement of Israeli settlers into Palestinian territory is done at the direct responsibility of the Israeli state such as to be in violation of "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." (Article 49, Fourth Geneva Convention). Again thats if you accept that the Fourth Geneva Convention even applies, AND, is the wall even part of that? Well yes its tangently related to protecting Israeli settlements deep in the West Bank which is the transfer of civilian population, so yes, it may be part of that violation, but does that mean that the building of the wall itself can be loudly declared as in violation of international law? NO. Will this set a precedent that security walls are forbidden by international law? Yes if future jurists see this as more than the joke that it is.


   And so, in conclusion there is so much thats absolutely ridiculous about this ruling that I am quite sure this ruling was primarily motivated by the Court being caught up in the world-wide anti-Israeli-wall furvor and wanted to make the ruling for political motives; which is absolutely not how a judicial body should act. There are so many legally deplorable things about this ruling it deeply troubles me that any legal scholars can take it seriously at all.
   And one more time, for the record, to many of you I may sound biased simply for not saying outright that Israel is persecuting the Palestinians, which may seem like a fundamental truth to you as a righious votary of the mainstream politically correct campus winds. Please realize that I am absolutely not speculating on whether or not the Israeli security wall is politically condemnable and and/or anything about the situation other than the pure cold and emotionless legal theories.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_introspection/]

This is going to sound so strange & so out there, but I semi - randomly found your journal, noticed you dig photography, ALSO noticed your uh, photo enlarger in your bathroom, and had to ask a question. Err, this feels so strange.

I too develop my own B&W film. But whenever I enlarge my pictures, I always get an edge that has the slightest bit of black. Do you have any idea what could be causing that, and how to prevent that?

enlargers

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Hmm... maybe that edge of your picture is outside the area of the projected image from the enlarger?

[mystache.livejournal.com]

I think the ICJ is just trying to displace the market-dominant minority of the US-Israeli alliance with some form of pseudo-justice. In reality, I think it comes down to US and Israel trying to convince the rest of the world that they have the right to... do what they are doing... and the rest of the world stipulating that they do not have that power. It is from this perspective that I have to agree with you that the ICJ is overstepping its bounds, but, to some extent, the ends justify the means.

Realism

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

But see, if the way the UN and/or ICJ or whatever else reflects power does not reflect the reality of the situation, those who are really more powerful than they are reflecting are just going to ignore them and the whole system will fall apart. My UN class professor is all liberal core and goes on all day about UN reform and how it should be more egalitarian.. but thats ridiculous because the UN needs to reflect the reality of the situation if its going to have any use realistically.. same thing with the ICJ; if they had concluded something the solidity of which Israel couldn't dispute, Israel might have listened to them, like say if the ICJ had demonstrated through thorough reasoning that the Fourth Geneva Convention should apply to them and Palestine should be considered an occupied territory. As it is Israel is going to be like "WTF?!???! Yeah well fuck you too ICJ." Just like that.

Re: Realism

[mystache.livejournal.com]

I would think Israel ignores any negative opinion either way seeing as how its non-binding.

Re: Realism

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely, if they did have jurisdiction and did legitimately find that Israel was in grievious violation of established international law, I'm sure Israel would be like "well thats great but yeah um we're gonna keep doing our thing here," but well, thats really got nothing to do with the fact that this ruling is not supported by teniable reasoning. The aura of "professionalism" shall we say in adhering to concrete theory of law that the Court establishes here may not affect the practical application of the situation in Israel, but the court deals with a lot of cases involving developing nations in Africa and elsewhere, and in these cases the Court's finding can mean a lot, IF they've established themselves as a respectable and authoratative body. And I think the ruling they just made shall really torpedo their ability to have their opinions considered in application to states where it otherwise could be final.

Hmmm...

[xtakenandhatedx.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... While I agree that Israel should have been a party to the case proceedings, it's pretty much understood that all nations will follow the geneva convention, regardless. It mainly deals with humanitarian issues, and most people abide by it as a common set of ethics anyway. It'd be like someone in the US protesting the constitution... "It's a set of rules that is logical and abided by by most people, and yet... i'm an individual and don't need to do as others". Figure how long he'd last...
I know the ICJ functions internationally, obviously, and thus the rules are extremely different when dealing with sovereign nations... but sometimes i feel that israel should just stay within their own borders for once and stop fortifying the territory they're pretty much stealing from Palestine. If they gave palestine sovereignty, they'd obviously go to war over the lands occupied by Israel. Might as well settle it once and for all. Woot Israel.

Re: Hmmm...

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Its not THE Geneva convention we're talking about here but "the Geneva Convention," which is like the fouth sequel and not everyone is still paying attention to the series y'know?


As to the Palestinian lands, I believe they were part of Israel to begin with and during the several wars, Israel has never to my knowledge been the aggressor.. its more like all their neighbours attack Israel and Israel kicks their ass, and I'm not sure but they may have won some land through this defensive ass kicking.

People try to misportray the situation in all kinds of ways, and as I believe you are just starting college (?) you will probably soon be exposed to this - if your campus is anything like ours you'll have lots of anti-Israel protestors.

The real root of the matter is that the Palestinians are significantly different than the Israelis and for the most part live in a largely seperate area which one could easily think of as another country.. but the way the international system functions its very very hard to force a country to allow part of itself to secede, thats where all this sovreignty stuff comes in. And most countries are anti-Israel and would like to see that "rule" not apply to Israel, but they can't deny the rule because that would open themselves up to secessionism, since more countries than you'd think have strong secessionist movements in some part. And so you see every country is put in this rather hypocritical position so they try to justify it all in other ways, because fact is, as far as I can tell, Israel came into possession of the land completely "legally."

Re: Not exactly. . .

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I think this comment provides a good context for this entry.

[ashael.livejournal.com]

Aww. As the resident Israeli, I feel loved. We should discuss this on AIM soon.
A few notes for tiresias_bc:
1. You forgot to mention the 1973 Yom Kippur war, which might not be directly related to the topic (Israel as the aggressor) but does seem rather suspicious, if you know what I mean.
2. Ariel Sharon's little facade at the Mosques has merely been a trigger. The tension has been present for months prior.
3. Many people forget that the whole mess erupted (after 70 years of moderated strife, 1881-1948) because the local arabs (who back then did not define themselves in any way as "Palestinians" or claimed to sovereignty) refused to accept the UN's decision Nov. 29th 1947 of two states, a decision they now desperatly fight to make a reality.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

So how's the reaction to the ICJ ruling in Israel?

[ashael.livejournal.com]

General contempt and dismissal.

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

As there should be. that thing was freakin ridiculous

[ashael.livejournal.com]

Let's just say that while the ruling might be rather cogent, it is also highly political and viewed as biased by nature. It also serves no real purpose other than political pressure (on a side note, you probably know that the Israeli supreme court ruled parts of the fence/wall illegal and ordered it moved).