The advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) published on July 19 is a travesty, which starts with its very title: “Legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem.”
This is a travesty because, in order to be occupied, a territory must have had a previous and recognized sovereign. From 1949 to 1967, the Gaza Strip was controlled by Egypt, and the West Bank by Jordan. Both Jordan and Egypt had illegally conquered territories where no sovereign existed as of the 15th of May 1948, and where Israel could legally claim sovereignty based on the principle of uti possidetis juris.
Jordan annexed the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1950, but that annexation did not gain international recognition. Only the UK and Pakistan recognized Jordanian sovereignty over the West Bank, although the UK did not apply that recognition to east Jerusalem. Jordan was not an internationally-recognized sovereign in the West Bank before Israel took control of that territory by exercising its right of self-defense from Arab aggression in June 1967.
By taking control of the West Bank (known as “Judea and Samaria” in Hebrew) in 1967, Israel recuperated a territory that had been designated for Jewish national self-determination by the San Remo Conference of 1920 and by the League of Nations Mandate of 1922. Israel also reunited with its historical homeland, where a millennium of Jewish sovereignty was ended by the Roman Empire in the first century, followed by the colonial conquests of the Arabs in the 7th century, of the Crusaders in the 12th century, of the Mamluks in the 13th century, and of the Turks in the 16th century.