The Chinese government has reminded the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the Palestinians “must not be denied” justice at a hearing on the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories on Thursday.
China’s Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser Ma Xinmin told the court in The Hague in the Netherlands yesterday that; “Justice has been long delayed, but it must not be denied.”
“Fifty-seven years have passed since Israel began its occupation of the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories). The unlawful nature of the occupation and sovereignty over the occupied territories remain unchanged,” he said.
Africa Today News, New York gathered that China used most of the time allotted to it at the ICJ to counter the United States’ argument on Wednesday that Israel should not be ordered to unconditionally withdraw from the occupied territories without security guarantees.
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“The US said the United Nations and the ICJ should stay out of a bilateral issue between Israel and Palestine. According to China, it was definitely a matter for the UN to talk about the self-determination of the Palestinian people,” Vaessen said.
“The Chinese representative said Israel is a foreign nation occupying Palestine, so the right to self-defence lies more with the Palestinians than with the Israelis.”
Ireland said it concluded that “Israel has committed serious breaches of a number of peremptory norms of general international law”.
The Irish representative added that Israel had also breached the basic rules of international humanitarian law.
The legal adviser for Japan’s Foreign Ministry, Tomohiro Mikanagi, also told the ICJ that his country believes a “two-state solution where Israel and the future independent Palestinian state live side by side in peace and dignity remains the only viable path for both peoples”.
For Jordan, Michael Wood said that “the only way for the [Palestinian] right to self-determination to be exercised is for the [Israeli] occupation to come to an end”.