Int'l lawyer: Palestinian Authority using ICJ case to achieve statehood

The Palestinian Authority is using the International Court of Justice case against Israel to achieve de facto statehood recognition, attorney Yuval Sasson told Tamar Uriel-Beeri and Sarah Ben-Nun on The Jerusalem Post Podcast.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is the third pillar and judiciary of the United Nations-led international system, coming after the General Assembly and Security Council. In this capacity, it does not have authority over individual people, but over nations.

However, there is another aspect of the ICJ that is especially relevant for Israel: States party to different conventions can find themselves under the ICJ's jurisdiction even if one of the parties isn't part of it.

Sasson explained that this is what has happened with Israel, which is a signatory on the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

"By joining this convention, Israel agreed to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in The Hague to decide on any disputes between member states," he said. 

The case against Israel was brought to the ICJ by South Africa, with both countries being signatories of the genocide convention. 

"South Africa isn't taking a punch and missing, they're taking a punch and making us softer and weaker for the next punch," Sasson said. "It's part of a global strategy that the Palestinian side has taken for years. They have been using the international legal system against Israel."

As for how South Africa is doing this, the lawyer elaborated. 

"By actually filing the claim, they had already had their impact because Israel changed what they did. We know that more humanitarian aid went in [to Gaza], so it had an immediate effect," Sasson said, noting that Israel went into Rafah under the scruitny of the ICJ.

The ICJ case can also have an impact on another issue in the UN, the debate over Israel's settlements and whether they qualify as crimes against humanity.

[South Africa is] impacting the results of this case by what they filed on the genocide convention," Sasson said. 

He further accused South Africa of being someone's proxy against Israel.

"It's obvious that we don't have any dispute with South Africa," Sasson said. "But they're actually being used in order to raise this issue."

A third thing to note is the actions of the Palestinian Authority. 

"They're trying to actually circumvent the Security Council, because they have filed a request to join South Africa in its appeal," Sasson said. "Now, they have asked to become a full member state of the UN. The United States has used its veto right in order to stop it. But if the International Court of Justice will accept the Palestinian Authority as a party to the discussions in The Hague, it actually in a way sets by duty of the judicial system that the Palestinian Authority is a state."

The tragedy of human rights

Sasson went on to claim that the court cases against Israel actually harm global human rights, calling it the tragedy of human rights in the world.

"The world is so preoccupied with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute that they're not looking into other things. So people aren't dealing with what's happening in Sudan, where... hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost over the past two years," he explained said.