Palestine’s Foreign Minister Gave A Powerful Speech Calling For An End To Israel’s Occupation At The ICJ
“[Palestinians] have a right to live in freedom and dignity in their ancestral land,” Riyad Al-Maliki said. “Justice delayed is justice denied, and the Palestinian people have been denied justice for far too long.”
Palestine’s Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki delivered a powerful opening statement about Israel’s colonialism and apartheid against Palestinians as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) opened a landmark hearing on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
Six days of hearings are happening at the ICJ, the world’s top court, in the Hague in the Netherlands, where 52 countries and three organizations will present their arguments on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since 1967.
The hearing comes after the UN General Assembly passed a resolution in December 2022 to ask the court to issue a legal opinion on the occupation and is separate from South Africa’s case against Israel committing genocide in Gaza since Oct. 7.
“For over a century, the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination has been denied and violated,” Maliki said on Monday, Feb. 19.
He presented five maps of Palestine throughout history, showing Israel’s gradual erosion of Palestinian land and forced expulsion of the local population.
The first showed historic Palestine, a territory he stressed was inhabited by Palestinians who should have had the right to self-determination before the UN pushed for its partition.
The second was the 1947 UN Partition Map, while the third showed three-quarters of historic Palestine becoming Israel from 1948 to 1967 following the first Nakba.
The fourth showed what is left of Palestine’s land, which Maliki called a mere “collection of disconnected bantustans”.
The final map was one presented by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN in September 2023, which he called “the new Middle East”.
Palestine is not on the map, which only shows Israel as all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.
Maliki called on the ICJ to declare Israel’s occupation illegal and order it to stop immediately.
“[Palestinians] have a right to live in freedom and dignity in their ancestral land,” he said. “Justice delayed is justice denied, and the Palestinian people have been denied justice for far too long.”
