Palestine, self-determination and international justice: looking back to the ICJ and looking forward to the ICC

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Israel-Palestine dispute is an intractable problem for international law. Palestine demands self-determination, independent statehood and the end of Israeli occupation. Israel demands an end to cross-border attacks, rights to annexed land containing Israeli settlements and sovereignty over Jerusalem. This is a wicked problem of particular relevance to the ongoing dissolution of the State on the world stage. Is Israel's vision of a state as a birth right compatible with Palestine's claim to statehood as an expression of self-determination? In this article, we engage with the temporality of this conflict via two international judicial processes – the 2003 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion in the Israeli Wall case and the potentially disruptive future intervention of the International Criminal Court in relation to alleged international crimes committed in the West Bank and Gaza since 2014. We argue that prospective efforts to achieve international justice in this case must privilege human rights concerns and prioritise the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. This analysis of law's intervention in a persistently ungovernable space aims to contribute to a reinvigoration of human rights discourse in the context of international criminal law.