Legal Scholar on How to Stop Israel from Shutting Down UNRWA

Haaretz reports: "IDF's Destruction of Northern Gaza Reveals the Government's Plan: We're Here to Stay." See: "Report Details Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in Beit Lahia, Northern Gaza" from AntiWar.com. The Guardian reports that Israeli spokesman Brig Gen Itzik Cohen told reporters on Tuesday: “There is no intention of allowing the residents of the northern Gaza Strip to return to their homes."  

 FRANCIS BOYLE, fboyle@illinois.edu
    Boyle is professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He represented Bosnia and Herzegovina at the International Court of Justice in its Genocide Convention case against Yugoslavia.

    He said today: "Israel's anti-UNRWA laws will not be implemented for 90 days. So the UN General Assembly should immediately request an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice for Israel violating the UN Convention on Privileges and Immunities. Because of the unique features of this Convention, such an Advisory Opinion would be binding upon Israel. ...

    “Israel is shutting down UNRWA as part of its longstanding campaign to extinguish the Palestinian Right of Return under International law that is enshrined in UN General Assembly Resolution 194, which Israel formally accepted as a condition for its Membership in the United Nations Organization along with the UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181. The Question posed by the UN General Assembly to the International Court of Justice for its Advisory Opinion must deal comprehensively with all these matters.”

    Boyle notes that while many proceedings of the International Court of Justice can take months or even years, there are mechanisms to expedite things. He cites the ICJ preventing the Reagan administration from closing the PLO Mission to the United Nations: On Sept. 15, 1987, the Reagan administration ordered the PLO UN Mission to be closed in New York City. On Dec. 17, the UN General Assembly passed an initial resolution on the matter requesting "the host country to abide by its treaty obligations under the Headquarters Agreement." Then on March 2, 1988, the UNGA passed a resolution requesting the International Court of Justice for an Advisory Opinion on the matter "taking into account the time constraint." The ICJ would deliver a ruling in a week. On March 9, the ICJ ruled that the U.S. "as a party to the Agreement between the United Nations and the United States of America regarding the Headquarters [Agreement] of 26 June 1947, is under an obligation, in accordance within section 21 of that Agreement, to enter into arbitration for the settlement of the dispute between itself and the United Nations." 

    Boyle said: “A U.S. federal court had ruled against the Reagan administration citing international law and the administration backed down later that year because of the ICJ Advisory Opinion. Today that PLO Mission has become the Mission of the State of Palestine to the United Nations, where Palestine now has UN Observer State Status along the lines of Switzerland before it was admitted as a full-fledged UN Member State.”

(Special thanks to Rajko Kolundzic.)

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