On July 19, the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, issued a historic ruling.

In an 83-page Advisory Opinion, addressed to the UN General Assembly, the UN’s top court declared that Israel’s 56-year belligerent occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and Gaza is unlawful, and that Israel must terminate it in short order.

The self-declared ‘Jewish State’ must also stop building settlements, the ICJ advised the UN, evacuate all its settlers, allow Palestinians to return to their lands, and compensate them for the losses and damages they’ve suffered.

The last time the ICJ issued an Advisory Opinion on the so-called Israel-Palestine ‘conflict’, back in 2004, it focused on the Separation Wall Israel was building, largely on Palestinian land. The Wall was illegal, the court declared, an infringement of the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in their historic homeland, and had to come down.

Israel ignored the order, and the international community hasn’t enforced it. ICJ Advisory Opinions are non-binding. They do carry enormous judicial authority, however.

Item 7 of the court’s July 19 Advisory Opinion, passed by a vote of 12-3, declared that “all States are under an obligation not to recognize as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by the continued presence of the State of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

Will the UN’s most powerful member states honor that obligation, and cut Israel off? The US certainly won’t. How about steadfast US and Israeli ally Canada?

In search of wisdom on this thorny question, the GPM reached out to Peter Larson. Larson is an Ottawa-based researcher and blogger, Chair of the Ottawa Forum on Israel/Palestine, and author of a weekly newsletter called CanadaTalksIsraelPalestine. He’s also taught a course about the Middle East at Carleton University, and has taken groups of Canadians on tours up and down occupied Palestine, guiding them through the ‘complexities’ of Israel-Palestine’s so-called ‘conflict’.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.

U.S. and allied aircraft at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, July 19, 2023

An astonishing fact: In the 248 years since the United States of America became an independent republic, the US has only been at peace for about eleven.

The United States of War, you could call it. David Vine does. Vine is a Professor of Anthropology at American University, in Washington D.C., and the author of a trilogy of books about permanent war as an American way of life, and about the role military bases play in its warfighting pursuits – across North America, at first; then around the world. The latest, published in 2020 by University of California Press, is entitled The United States of War – a Global History of America’s endless conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State.

Listen to our conversation in today’s podcast. Click on the play button above, or go here.