28 No. 70 JUSTICE being “justified” by Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestine.” This thinking reflects, and is indeed perpetuated by, the terminology employed by the international diplomatic community. The ICJ’s 2004 Advisory Opinion and the international community’s practice of “[c]onstantly referring to Israel as an occupier is not legally correct and not useful. It is a form of incitement and provocation.”22 This is true of both Israel’s presence (or lack thereof) in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel’s presence in the West Bank ‒ whether it is an occupation or not ‒ is not illegal, but rather “by agreement with the Palestinians under the Oslo Accord II.”23 Israel’s presence in Gaza, prior to October 7, was non-existent. After Israel evacuated Gaza in 2005, Hamas leaders issued many statements to the effect that Gaza had been liberated and the occupation ended. In fact, it remains the case that Israel does not “occupy” Gaza. On the contrary, Hamas conquered and occupies Gaza since at least 2007, ousting the Palestinian Authority and preventing it from rendering its quasigovernmental functions.24 The October 7 massacre underscores the point that, “[b]efore the Israeli military presence from the West Bank can be removed, the threat of terrorism . . . directed against Israel itself has to be removed.”25 As argued by B’nai B’rith, Occupation/security measures are a symptom of the problems Palestinians face, not the cause, not the disease. The proximate causes are terrorism and hatred. The ultimate causes, the disease, are antisemitism, anti-Israelism and antiZionism. Remove the hatred, the acts of anti-Zionism, end the terrorism and the stringent Israeli security measures will disappear.26 The international community continues to make the same mistake of “[a]ttacking a symptom as if it were a cause,” and this does nothing to remove the cause, or indeed even the symptom. Attacking a symptom as if it were a cause makes the disease worse through neglect and misdirection. That is what we would see if the International Court of Justice were to answer the pending request for an advisory opinion and give the answer the supporters of the resolution would like.27 The October 7 massacre also highlights the highly unbalanced and now clearly offensive nature of the Referring Resolution. This is not by accident, “[t]he request for an advisory opinion is a component of a comprehensive anti-Israel and anti-Zionist strategy. The goal of the Israelhaters is, through a second advisory opinion adverse to Israel, to continue their deadly demonization and delegitimization campaign.”28 For the international community to play a role in facilitating regional peace, it must be able to identify and cease the advancement of narratives promulgated by antiZionists, such as those espoused in the Referring Resolution and the hatred taught in Palestinian and Gaza schools, largely through instruction in UNRWA schools. As the acts of Hamas, and the global response from antiIsrael activists have very clearly shown, [t]he strategy of anti-Zionists is neither a strategy for peace nor a strategy of indifference to peace; it is rather a strategy of active hostility to peace. Anti-Zionists do what they can, through a series of terrorist attacks, to discourage Israeli interest in peace. Through these attacks they hope to create the impression amongst Israelis that peace is impossible. The message they try to give to Israelis is that any autonomous Palestinian state adjoining Israel would be nothing more than a terrorist free zone, a site for unending unimpeded terrorist attacks against Israel.29 When it issued the 2004 Advisory Opinion, the ICJ failed to grasp the destructiveness of terrorism perpetrated by Hamas and supported by anti-Zionists, and this miscalculation has proven to be a significant impediment to peace and resolution. This happened because the ICJ relied primarily on UN resolutions and reports rather than on authentic evidence. The footage from October 7, particularly the footage recorded by Hamas terrorists that 22. Ibid. at 69, 8(a). 23. Ibid. 24. Id. at 62, 7. 25. Id. 72, 10. 26. Id. at 71, 9. 27. Id. at 72, 12. 28. Ibid. at 68, 4. 29. Id. at 79, 13.
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