The ICJ's 2024 Advisory Opinion, Explained

What is the ICJ's 2024 advisory opinion?

At three o'clock on the afternoon of 19 July 2024, the President of the International Court of Justice, Nawaf Salam, sat in the Peace Palace in The Hague and read out an answer to a question the United Nations had put to his Court eighteen months earlier: is Israel's occupation of Palestinian land lawful? After the largest advisory proceedings the Court has ever held, the answer was no. If you're arriving at this cold, our Palestine learning hub has the wider background.

The case is formally called *Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem* — case No. 186 on the Court's docket. The Court had already ruled once before, in 2004, that Israel's separation wall in the West Bank breached international law. This opinion goes much further: it covers the occupation itself, the settlements, East Jerusalem, and the territory as a whole.

The short version: by 11 votes to 4, the Court found that Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is unlawful and must end "as rapidly as possible". It also found, among other things, that Israel's settlements are illegal, that its measures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank amount to annexation, and that other states have their own legal obligations as a result. None of that is enforceable the way a criminal conviction is. All of it carries weight.

How the case reached the Court

Advisory opinions don't start with a plaintiff. They start with a UN body asking a question.

The General Assembly's request

On 30 December 2022 the General Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/77/247, by a recorded vote of 87 in favour, 26 against and 53 abstentions. Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada were among the 26 that voted no; France was among the 53 that abstained.

Paragraph 18 of that resolution asked the Court two questions:

• (a) "What are the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures?"
• (b) "How do the policies and practices of Israel referred to in paragraph 18 (a) above affect the legal status of the occupation, and what are the legal consequences that arise for all States and the United Nations from this status?"

Written statements and oral hearings

The Court gave states and organisations until 25 July 2023 to file written statements, and 57 came in. States could then comment on each other's statements by 25 October 2023. Israel filed a written statement arguing that giving an opinion at all would be "harmful" to resolving the conflict — and then decided not to show up for the next stage.

That next stage was public hearings, held at the Peace Palace from 19 to 26 February 2024. Palestine, 49 UN member states and three international organisations (the League of Arab States, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the African Union) took the floor — more participants than in any advisory case in the Court's history. Israel wasn't one of them.

Ireland at the podium

Ireland was. On 22 February 2024, Attorney General Rossa Fanning SC told the Court, on Ireland's behalf, that "the evident permanence of the settlements can only be explained... by Israel's intention of annexing the land upon which they are built", and that Israel's occupation and settlement activity together had denied Palestinians their right to self-determination. Ireland also said it had encouraged the Israeli government to take part in the hearings rather than sit them out. For how this submission fed into Irish law, see our explainer on the Occupied Territories Act.

What the Court decided

Israel has occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza since the war of June 1967 — 57 years by the time the Court ruled. Length alone doesn't make an occupation illegal, the Court said; the law of occupation was written to be temporary, but it sets no clock that automatically flips an occupation from lawful to unlawful. What matters is whether the situation is still consistent with the rules against acquiring territory by force and with the right to self-determination.

Occupation, settlements and annexation

On settlements, the Court didn't have to start from scratch. It had already found, in 2004, that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem "have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law". In 2024 it repeated that finding and added, with what its own summary calls "grave concern", that the settlement programme had kept growing since 2004 rather than winding down.

On East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Court went further than it had in 2004: Israel's measures there, it found, amount to an attempt to acquire sovereignty by force — annexation, in other words — which is barred outright under the prohibition on acquiring territory by force.

Discriminatory legislation

The Court also looked at the body of Israeli law and policy that applies differently to settlers and to Palestinians in the same territory. Its conclusion was blunt: the "régime of comprehensive restrictions" imposed on Palestinians amounts to "systemic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin", breaching the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). It singled out the "near-complete separation" the settlements impose between settler and Palestinian communities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as a breach of Article 3 of CERD — the article that bars racial segregation.

Self-determination

Underneath all of this sits one right: self-determination. The Court found that decades of occupation, settlement and annexation have deprived the Palestinian people of that right over a long period, and that letting the situation continue "undermines the exercise of this right in the future". Occupation, the Court said, cannot be used to leave a population indefinitely "in a state of suspension and uncertainty".

The bottom line: an unlawful presence

Put those findings together and the Court's conclusion follows: Israel's continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory — treated throughout as a single territorial unit covering the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza — is unlawful.

One limit is worth flagging. The Court said its opinion doesn't cover Israel's conduct in Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, since the General Assembly's request predates it and asked about Israel's "ongoing" policies. For what the Court — and others — say about Gaza's occupation status specifically, including a second advisory opinion in October 2025, see our explainer on whether Gaza is still occupied.

The vote, finding by finding

None of this was unanimous, and the margins tell their own story. Paragraph 285 of the opinion — the operative part, where the Court states its actual findings — records nine separate votes:

• Vice-President Julia Sebutinde of Uganda dissented on almost every one of these findings — she had argued the Court should have declined to give the opinion at all.
• Judges Peter Tomka, Ronny Abraham and Bogdan Aurescu voted with the majority on jurisdiction, on settlements and reparations, and on the three findings about other states' obligations — but broke away specifically on the two core conclusions: that Israel's presence is unlawful, and that it must end.

Is the advisory opinion legally binding?

No. Advisory opinions, by definition, advise; they don't bind. Israel is under no court order to withdraw, and nobody is coming to enforce paragraph 285. What the opinion does have is authority: it's the considered view of the UN's principal judicial organ, reached after eighteen months of proceedings and more participants than any advisory case in its history. Reuters called it, accurately, "not binding but carr[ying] weight under international law" — the kind of weight that can shape how other courts, governments and international bodies act, even without anyone able to force the issue.

The General Assembly, which asked the question in the first place, decided to use that weight. That's the next part of the story.

What happened after the ruling

Reactions split along entirely predictable lines.

Israel rejected it

Within hours, Israel's Foreign Ministry called the opinion "fundamentally wrong" and "blatantly one-sided", arguing it "mixes politics and law". Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office went further, calling it a "decision of lies" and insisting "the Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land". President Isaac Herzog called it "one-sided and ill-judged". Two days later, on 21 July, Netanyahu filed a draft Cabinet decision formally rejecting it.

Palestine and Hamas welcomed it

The Palestinian Authority's presidency called the ruling "a triumph for justice, affirming that the Israeli occupation is illegal", and urged the international community to compel Israel to end its occupation "without conditions or exceptions". Riyad al-Maliki, adviser to President Mahmoud Abbas, called it a landmark moment "for Palestine, justice, and international law". Hamas welcomed it too.

The US and the EU

Washington's reaction split down the middle. The State Department said on 20 July that Israel's settlement programme is "inconsistent with international law" — but added that it was "concerned that the breadth of the court's opinion will complicate efforts to resolve the conflict". Asked about that two days later, spokesperson Matthew Miller said the US wanted "the actual establishment of an independent Palestinian state", which in its view required negotiation rather than "votes in international bodies that don't do anything".

The EU's response was more direct. High Representative Josep Borrell said the Court's conclusions were "largely consistent with EU positions", and framed respecting them as "our moral duty... irrespective of the subject in question".

Ireland's response

Tánaiste Micheál Martin said he "very much" welcomed the opinion, and that it "largely confirms the Government's legal analysis... that Israel's settlement and related policies in the OPT amount to illegal annexation" — the same case Ireland had made in its own written and oral submissions. He said Ireland would "engage with partners – in the EU, across the region, and more widely within the United Nations" to act on it. It's this opinion, and specifically its findings on trade and investment, that Ireland later cited as the legal basis for the Occupied Territories Act.

The General Assembly's follow-up: a 12-month deadline

Two months later, the General Assembly acted on the Court's ninth finding — that it should consider "the precise modalities and further action required". On 18 September 2024 it adopted resolution ES-10/24 by 124 votes to 14, with 43 abstentions. Israel and the United States were among the 14 no votes.

The resolution did something the Court itself hadn't: it put a number on "as rapidly as possible". It demanded that Israel end its unlawful presence "no later than 12 months from the adoption of the present resolution" — 18 September 2025 — and set out a longer list of demands than the Court had, including withdrawing all military forces, returning seized land and property, and letting displaced Palestinians return. It also invited Switzerland, as depositary of the Geneva Conventions, to convene a conference of the Convention's states parties within six months.

Where things stand in 2026

That 12-month deadline passed over a year before this was written, and Israel has not withdrawn. If anything, the picture in Gaza has moved in the opposite direction: since the October 2025 ceasefire, Israeli forces have held ground inside the Strip along what's called the "Yellow Line", and the ICJ itself returned to the question of Israel's control there in a second advisory opinion that same month. Our explainer on whether Gaza is still occupied covers that second opinion, and what the "Yellow Line" means for the law of occupation, in full.

None of that undoes the July 2024 opinion. It's still the most detailed statement the world's highest court has made on the legality of the occupation as a whole, and states and campaigners keep citing it — Ireland's Occupied Territories Act is one direct example. What's changed since is a familiar pattern for advisory opinions: the law is clearer than it was, and the politics haven't caught up. If you want the primary documents behind all of this, they're collected on our resources page, and the dates sit on our timeline.