International Court of Justice and Palestinian-Israeli "peace negotiations"

Whenever you hear about Palestinian-Israeli “peace talks/peace negotiations”, remember the following lines.

In the North Sea Continental Shelf Case[i], the International Court of Justice ruled that there is an obligation on States to enter “... into negotiations with a view to arriving at an agreement… they are under an obligation so to conduct themselves that the negotiations are meaningful, which will not be the case when either of them insists upon its own position without contemplating any modification of it…”

Therefore, the ICJ in this Case set out the scope and extent of the obligation to negotiate.

Now: are the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations truly engaged into “with a view to arriving at an agreement”? Are they “meaningful”?

How many pre-conditions to reaching “peace” has Israel imposed? And has Israel stopped creating irreversible facts on the ground?






[i] North Sea Continental Shelf (Federal Republic of Germany/Netherlands), Judgment, I.C.J. Reports 1969, p. 3.

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