On July 19, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a nonbinding advisory opinion stating that Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem is illegal, and calling for it to end “as rapidly as possible.” After concluding that the situation facing Palestinians “constitutes systemic discrimination based on, inter alia, race, religion or ethnic origin,” the court ordered Israel to cease all settlement building activity, and instructed member states “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” — a phrase many have interpreted as meaning an arms embargo.

The ruling, which stems from a December 2022 request by the United Nations General Assembly for an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s ongoing occupation, was quickly rejected by the Israeli foreign ministry as “fundamentally wrong” and “blatantly one-sided.” Yet it confirms what Palestinian activists and their allies have argued for decades and could make it harder for Israel’s allies like Germany and the United States to continue to feign ignorance about the human rights situation in Palestine. To better understand what the ICJ ruling could mean for Palestinians, Jacobin spoke with the Palestinian human rights lawyer Munir Nuseibah of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem.