Who Won the U.S. Presidential Debate?

On July 19, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory ruling pertaining to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. Much will go into analysing that ruling, but there is one big question that needs to be asked: how is this reminder of international law, and its position on Israel’s occupation, going to reverberate in the United States particularly, and the West more widely?

The content of the ruling was not entirely unexpected – international law, when it comes to this particular issue, is rather clear, and has been for decades. Nevertheless, it was a reconfirmation of where international law stood: all of these territories are under Israeli occupation; that occupation is unlawful; and it should not be normalised. In the Arab world, and much further afield in the Global South, there was a good deal of support expressed for the ruling, also unsurprisingly.

Of course, Israel rejected the court’s findings, which was quite expected. But an irony was emphatically manifested in how the US specifically, but also much of the West, responded to, quite literally, the “World Court”: by suggesting that its authority, which they say they recognise and respect, does not extend to them and their allies.

This, while ironic, was also hardly surprising.

The US has long publicly expressed support for the “rules-based order”, and international law that is meant to underpin those rules, but ignored international law when it fell foul of its interests and even tried to circumvent its institutions.

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