International Court of Maljustice

   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.