The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) calls on the Israeli authorities to desist from the recent decision to move forward with a settlement plan in the E1 area of the occupied West Bank and urges all States to prevent Israel from carrying out this plan. Implementing such a plan would effectively cut off the occupied West Bank from East Jerusalem, in clear violation of international law – including Israel’s obligations under relevant UN resolutions, the Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 of the International Court of Justice and the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
“Establishing these new settlements furthers Israel’s unlawful policy of annexing, de facto, the Palestinian territory and preventing the viability and the contiguity of the Palestinian State, in violation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” said Saïd Benarbia, ICJ Middle East and North Africa Programme Director.
On 20 August 2025, the Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration, a Defence Ministry department, gave final approval for a plan to “build some 3,400 housing units between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the West Bank”. With respect to this, the UN Secretary General has warned that, “The advancement of this project is an existential threat to the two-State solution. It would sever the northern and southern West Bank and have severe consequences for the territorial contiguity of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
In its advisory opinion of 19 July 2024 – in light of Israel’s violations of the prohibition on the acquisition of territory by force and of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination – the International Court of Justice held that Israel must immediately cease all new settlement activity and bring an end to its illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.
“Israel must desist from taking steps that, by maintaining and furthering its illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, directly contravene the International Court of Justice’s ruling and the very foundations of the UN legal order,” Benarbia added.
The ICJ calls on all States to comply with their duty – pursuant to their international law obligations, including under the UN Charter, customary international law and the Geneva Conventions – to do their utmost to prevent Israel from carrying out its settlement plan and to refrain from rendering any aid or assistance, including arms transfers and economic or trade dealings, to Israel that would enable the implementation of this plan and the on-going commission of grave violations of international law.
Background
In its Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024, which concerned the “legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”, after recalling that the right to territorial integrity is recognized under customary international law as “a corollary of the right to self-determination”, the International Court of Justice considered that “Israel, as the Occupying Power, has the obligation not to impede the Palestinian people from exercising its right to self-determination, including its right to an independent and sovereign State, over the entirety of the Occupied Palestinian Territory”. The Court concluded that the fragmentation and annexation of Palestinian territory resulting from Israel’s settlement policy violate the integrity of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and, along with other aspects of Israel’s settlement policy, such as “the entire régime of restrictions on the movement of Palestinians” between different parts of the Palestinian territory, the integrity of Palestinians as a people, significantly impeding its right to self-determination.
Furthermore, the International Court of Justice found that Israel’s settlement policy – which the implementation of the E1 plan will further expand – violates article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in two respects: first, with respect to the prohibition incumbent on the Occupying power to “transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”; and secondly, with respect to the prohibition of forcible transfer of the occupied civilian population, which is the ineluctable consequence of the forcible evictions, land confiscation and extensive house demolitions that the E1 plan’s implementation involves. In this regard, the Court further found that the confiscation of private and public property that Israel’s settlement policy entails violates articles 46, 52 and 55 of the Hague Regulations.
Accordingly, the Court underscored that all States are “under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s illegal presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” and to “ensure that any impediment resulting from the illegal presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to the exercise of the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end”. In addition, all the States Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention have the obligation, while respecting the Charter of the United Nations and international law, to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention.
Contact
Saïd Benarbia, Director, ICJ Middle East and North Africa Programme; t: +41 22 979 3800, e: said.benarbia@icj.org
Nour Al Hajj, Communications & Advocacy Officer, ICJ Middle East and North Africa Programme; e: nour.alhajj@icj.org
