Volume 3 ,Issue 1 ,September 2026 ,Pages 333-357
Abas Ahmed Abbas ; Asst.prof.Dr. Rebaz Rasool Khadr2
The International Court of Justice is one of the primary organs within the organizational and operational system of the United Nations. The Court is referred to as a peaceful mechanism and plays a significant role in settling international disputes. One of the major disputes that the Court has dealt with is the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. The Court has adopted several rulings on this issue including three advisory opinions in 2004, 2024 and 2025, and is currently in the process of dealing with three related contentious cases received in 2018, 2023, and 2024. In its rulings, the Court has generally recognized Palestine as an occupied territory under international humanitarian law. It has further recognized most of Israel's measures taken in those territories as unlawful, especially those related to demographic changes and the establishment of Jewish settlements. The impact of the Court's rulings has extended further to the recognition of Palestine as an independent state by many states and, most importantly as an observer state by the United Nations General Assembly. However, the impact of the Court's rulings has been limited in practice due to the lack of an effective enforcement mechanism to force Israel to comply with the Court's decisions and the existence of a number of legal procedural and objective challenges along with several political obstacles. Among the challenges are the limitation on the power of the Court in receiving and dealing with contentious cases, the contradiction between some principles of international law, such as the principle of sovereignty and the principle of self-determination, the use of veto power and the issue of political interest and double standards among states.