Amid this gloomy and dark time, the advisory opinion rendered by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world’s highest court based in The Hague, on the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), offers a small window of hope to Palestinians and others who still have faith in a right and law- based international order and attempt to use international law to restrain Israel. The ICJ declared Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory—comprising the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, as illegal under international law.

Israel occupied almost all the territories of Palestine under the British Mandate during the 1967 war and this area still remains almost entirely under its control. Notwithstanding the Security Council’s unanimous resolution passed on November 22, 1967, calling Israel to withdraw its armed forces from territories it occupied during the war, Israel systematically planned and executed a policy designed to confiscate the lands it conquered while simultaneously expelling Palestinians, demolishing their homes and building and expanding Jewish settlements to finally covert the conquest into annexation. On September 25, 1971, the Security Council (SC), once again reiterated that “all legislative and administrative actions taken by Israel to change the status of the City of Jerusalem, including expropriation of lands and properties, transfer of populations and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section, are totally invalid and cannot change that status,” Israel, like in the past, turned a deaf ear to this call by the SC.

A recent United Nations (UN) report has acknowledged the rapid and exponential rise in Israeli settlements and settlers in the occupied areas, including Jerusalem. The report states that during the period from November 1, 2022 to October 31, 2023, about 24,300 new Israeli housing units were built in the occupied West Bank, which is the highest on record since UN monitoring began in 2017. In East Jerusalem alone, approximately 9,670 units of Israeli settlement were reportedly built during this period. By 2023, there were approximately 465,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, spread across around 300 settlements and outposts, while some 230,000 settlers in East Jerusalem.

It must be noted that Israeli policy of annexations, expulsions and the creation of settlements are specifically prohibited by international law. For example, article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 clearly proscribes the annexation of occupied territory, and article 49 prohibits the forcible transfer or deportation of residents from an occupied area. In July 2001, Israel also constructed a wall along the Green Line and in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a security barrier against violence from Palestinians, which the ICJ, in its advisory opinion rendered in 2004, found contrary to international law.

The Israeli policy has resulted in continuous displacement of Palestinians, creating a source of tension and conflict. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, the ever expanding Israeli settlements in the OPT risk eliminating any practical possibility of a Palestinian state.

It must be noted that, in addition to a contentious jurisdiction, which the ICJ exercises to decide legal disputes between states, it has an advisory jurisdiction that allows it to provide non-binding opinions on legal questions at the written request of the UN organs, its specialized agencies or related organisations authorized to make such a request. Accordingly, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) on December 30, 2022, requested the ICJ, pursuant to Article 65 of its Statute, to render an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, as well as its denial of the rights of Palestinian people to self-determination, its discriminatory legislation, and its efforts to alter the demographic composition, character and status of the areas it occupies, including the Holy City of Jerusalem.

In accordance with Article 66(1) and (2) of the ICJ Statute, 52 countries and three international organisations submitted written statements before the court in July and August 2023. Interestingly, almost all written submissions were on behalf of Palestine. The court heard oral arguments in February 2024. Israel boycotted the court’s proceedings. The ICJ in its 78-year long history has not witnessed such a huge response from states.

The 83-page advisory opinion of the ICJ offers a detailed response to the questions presented to it by the UNGA.  Vindicating the Palestinian cause, the ICJ in no uncertain terms declared that Israel’s continued occupation and annexation of the Palestinian territories are unlawful and ordered it to end its presence there, including all its settlements and settlers, “as rapidly as possible.” The court declared that, the sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the OPT and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.

In the opinion of the court, Israel is under an obligation to cease immediately all new settlement activities, and to evacuate all settlers from the OPT and make reparation for the damage caused to all concerned. The ICJ also obliged Israel to pay reparations to the population of the OPT and called on third states and international organizations, including the UN, to refrain from helping Israel maintain its presence there. The court asked the UNGA, which requested the opinion, and the SC, to consider the precise modalities and further action required to bring to an end as rapidly as possible the unlawful presence of Israel in the OPT.

Consequent to this remarkable opinion by the world court, the UNGA adopted a momentous resolution on September 13, 2024, by a two-thirds majority in a recorded vote of 124 in favour to 14 against, and with 43 abstentions. The resolution demanded that Israel brings to an end its unlawful presence in the OPT, no later than 12 months from the adoption of the resolution. The UNGA resolution outlines the obligation of states and international organizations not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the OPT.

Though the ICJ ruling is unlikely to change the course of the ongoing war in Gaza and end its occupation, it will have profound political implications and can be leveraged to mobilise meaningful international pressure against Israeli misdeeds in the OPT and for the cause of Palestinian statehood. The ruling has woken up the world to the crying need for justice for the Palestinians, who have endured decades of cruelty and systematic human rights violations and have long, been struggling to hold Israel accountable. The ruling offers much needed succour to Palestinians at a dire moment in history.

(The author teaches international law at Aligarh Muslim University and heads its Strategic and Security Studies Programme)

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Indolent Indian cows sitting or eating on the busiest roads of the country’s cities are common sights for anyone who has ever visited the subcontinent.

Today, this mammal is at the centre of the country’s increasingly violent social upheaval. In the name of defending Hindu values, vigilante mobs are lynching and killing people suspected of eating or trading cows, and the country’s openly hindutva, or “Hindu-first”, government has done little to stop them.

In fact, on April 25, the right-wing ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), proposed a measure to identify cows using an electronic ID system similar to the one deployed in 2012 to identify all Indian citizens. Welcome to Indian “meat politics”.
 

Holy cow

Cows are considered sacred in certain interpretations of Hindu philosophy. But some academics, such as the retired Delhi University historian Dwijendra Narayan Jha, have debunked the myth of the absolutely “holy cow”.

That did not prevent a mob from murdering a 55-year-old Rajasthan dairy farmer, Pehlu Khan. In the April 6 incident captured on video and widely viewed on social media, vigilantes brutally thrashed him and the other Muslims traders, ostensibly for transporting cattle.

The Hindu trailer driver, however, was allowed to leave safely, casting doubt on the real aim of this cow vigilantism.

Rajasthan’s home minister, Gulab Chand Kataria, defended the act, saying that “the cow protectors [did] a good job by protecting cows from smuggling”. He refused to label Khan’s death a murder, blaming “both sides” for the violence.

Police reports are in fact often filed against the victims of such attacks, charging them with killing or possessing cows.

And, in March, a vigilante mob set fire to three meat shops in Hathras, a district in western Uttar Pradesh.

The rise of the yogi

Such attacks on religious minorities have increased across India since Narendra Modi was elected prime minister in 2014, backed by the Hindu nationalist BJP.

And it has happened even though he assured Indian citizens that minorities would be protected, and people who voted for him believed him.

Today, the country’s Muslim population are uneasy.

According to the last census, from 2011, 14% of Indians are Muslim, and nearly 80% report being Hindu. Other minority religions include Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism.

In March, the electoral victory of Yogi Adityanath as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, a heavily Muslim state in the north, sent a strong signal to India’s minorities and defenders of the country’s constitutionally enshrined secularism.
 

Adityanath is a firebrand Hindu priest who has obliged his own ministers to meet for hours, almost without sleeping, and to follow strict ascetic and monastic rules. He once said that people opposing Surya Namaskar (a yoga pose) “should drown themselves in the sea”.

His extremist movement, Hindu Yuvu Vahini (Hindu Youth Organisation), has long been controversial. In 2005, it was accused of instigating communal tensions; and it’s dubbed the Aligarh Muslim University “a nursery of terrorism”.

Adityanath is also known for his strident anti-minority rhetoric. In 2015, he compared the world famous Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan to Pakistani terrorist leader Hafiz Saeed. And last year he claimed that Mother Teresa was part of a conspiracy to “christianise” India.

In January, Adityanath suggested that Donald Trump’s proposed immigration ban on Muslims entering the United States should be replicated in India.

Nonetheless, he was elected chief minister in March 2017.

Killing the cow trade… and its traders

Soon after, Adityanath summarily shuttered many of the state’s illegal slaughterhouses, the majority of which are Muslim-run.

India is one of the largest exporters of beef and veal (mainly from water buffalo) in the world, and Uttar Pradesh is the biggest producer in the country.
 

Since the state government’s crackdown, the industry has been facing a critical situation nationwide as many other BJP-ruled states follow Uttar Pradesh’s lead.
In March, Gujarat passed legislation increasing the punishment for cow slaughter from seven years in prison to to a life sentence. It is the country’s harshest cow-protection law (though if the chief minister of Chhattisgarh state, in central India, had his way, anyone caught killing cows there, he says, would be hanged).

India’s leather industry, a significant producer that feeds off the meat industry, is also feeling the crunch.

Minorities in the crosshairs

The cow trade in India mainly benefits Muslims, as they are the dominant traders and consumers of beef (Islam does not prohibit its consumption), so the surge in cow protectionism has disproportionately impacted them.

But Christians also routinely face the ire of India’s Hindu extremists. According to OpenDoors, a Holland-based Christian human rights NGO, violence against Christians in India has increased since 2016. Churches have been destroyed; priests, nuns and parishioners have been beaten.

On April 5, the members of the Uttar Pradeish’s Hindu Yuva Vahini group forced the police to halt prayers at a church in the town of Maharajganj, alleging that it was forcing Indians to convert to Christianity.

India’s Dalit community – so-called “untouchables” – is also being targeted. In July 2016, seven members of a a Dalit family in Una town, in western Gujarat, were beaten for skinning a dead cow – a traditional occupation in this outcast community. The event sparked nationwide protests, but the government’s response has been tepid.

What is left of secular India?

Cow protection may have made India “a subject of ridicule internationally”, as one commentator wrote online in The Daily O news site, but it is not the only sign of the resurgent Hindu cultural nationalism that Modi’s administration has ushered in.

April 2017 saw moral vigilantes targeting inter-faith couples, claiming that when Muslim boys date Hindu girls it represents a “love jihad”. These “anti-Romeo squads” have attacked many young couples, sometimes beating the men to death.
 

From meat politics to love jihads, such incidents have strained India’s constitutional values and secular fabric, leaving many to wonder whether Prime Minister Modi’s development agenda – for which he has declared “Sab Ka Saath Sab Vikaas” (development for all together) – is just a farce.

Indeed, the atmosphere of fear and insecurity stoked among India’s minorities may have been intentionally crafted to consolidate Hindu power in the upcoming 2019 legislative elections.

In the year after Modi’s 2014 election, a series of incidents of communal violence revealed a rising climate of intolerance in India. Intellectuals in India and abroad, including Salman Rushdie, quickly and powerfully denounced the affront to Indian values.

Now, after a humiliating electoral defeat in Uttar Pradesh in March, demoralised secular parties and liberal intellectuals largely fear raising their voices. Has India lost its secular soul?

Aftab Alam is a professor at Aligarh Muslim University.

This story was first published on The Conversation. Read the original.

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