No, the ICJ hasn't declared Israel an 'illegal state'
The false claims have been shared repeatedly over the past few months.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/04/24/no-the-icj-hasnt-declared-israel-an-illegal-state
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The false claims have been shared repeatedly over the past few months.
READ MORE : http://www.euronews.com/2025/04/24/no-the-icj-hasnt-declared-israel-an-illegal-state
Subscribe to our channel. Euronews is available on Dailymotion in 12 languages
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00:00No, the ICJ hasn't declared Israel an illegal state.
00:08Old false claims that the UN's highest court,
00:11the International Court of Justice,
00:13has declared Israel an illegal state,
00:15have resurfaced online.
00:17Various social media posts circulating in recent weeks
00:20show a video of former Palestinian Foreign Minister
00:23Riyad al-Maliki delivering a speech
00:25in which he says that Israel's occupation of Palestine
00:28has been declared unlawful.
00:30He adds that the court declared that the occupation
00:32violates the UN Charter of Human Rights,
00:35that the ICJ has ordered Israel to cease his occupation
00:38as quickly as possible,
00:39and that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory
00:43are illegal and should be dismantled.
00:45The posts sharing the video present it as breaking news
00:48and state that this means Israel has been declared
00:50an illegal state and shouldn't be recognised as a sovereign nation.
00:54However, not only are the claims wrong, they're old too.
00:57Firstly, there's no evidence that the court has handed down
01:00any such decision in recent weeks,
01:02be it an announcement from the ICJ itself
01:04or any news reports about the supposed decision.
01:07A search on X shows that the false claim
01:09has been repeatedly shared over the past year,
01:12since the video showing al-Maliki was first published
01:15on 19 July 2024.
01:17He delivered his speech in response to a real, non-binding ICJ decision,
01:21in which the court did indeed label Israel's presence
01:25in the Palestinian occupied territories as unlawful.
01:28It also called for an immediate end to the construction of settlements
01:31and condemned Israel's control over the lands it took nearly six decades ago.
01:36However, at no point did the ICJ declare Israel an illegal nation,
01:40nor did it order other countries to stop recognising it as a sovereign state.
01:44Responding to the ruling at the time,
01:46Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a distortion of historical truth
01:51and that the West Bank and East Jerusalem are part of the Jewish people's historical homeland.
01:56The West Bank and East Jerusalem are part of the Jewish people's historical homeland.