The present article analyzes the expected implications of the recent Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legal status of East Jerusalem in accordance with international law. The Court stated that East Jerusalem is occupied territory and Israel is the occupying power in this territory. Generally, the Opinion lends support to the Palestinians' arguments and is likely to enhance their bargaining position in the future negotiations regarding the regime to be applied to East Jerusalem. Unlike the differential approach undertaken by the parties during the recent stage of negotiations (that suggested applying different legal regimes to the city's different areas), the Court's Opinion did not make distinction between the different parts of East Jerusalem. Analysis of these distinct approaches indicates that the differential approach (adopted during the recent negotiations)is more likely to enhance the prospects of attaining an agreed solution to the dispute over East Jerusalem. The Court's emphasis on the interests of third parties as well as the role of the UN tends to multilateralize the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians regarding the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. The impacts of possible multilateralization of the dispute over East Jerusalem on the prospects of achieving an agreed solution are not clear. In contrast to the Court's multilateral approach with regard to the general Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the analysis of Israel's obligation regarding access to the holy places is essentially premised on two bilateral treaties (the 1949 General Armistice Agreement and the 1994 Peace Treaty between Israel and Jordan). In light of the major importance of numerous holy places in other parts of the globe, a preferable legal analysis could have been founded on a reasonable interpretation of general international human rights instruments, particularly the 1966 Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

This Article examines how the advisory opinion of the ICJ on the “Legal Consequences of Constructing a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” dealt with the status of the territory through which the separation barrier passed and the question of the status of the “Green Line” which delineates this territory.

Israel has accepted that the rules of belligerent occupation are to be applied to the territory, the Court however did not suffice itself with applying the laws of belligerent occupation but chose to follow current UN precedents in the use of the phrase occupied “Palestinian” territory. The Court does not attempt to resolve the dilemma of how the West Bank could be defined as occupied “Palestinian” territory when its status as occupied territory presumably derived from Israel's seizure of the Area from Jordan and a Palestinian State had never existed there, or anywhere.

Although the Court disclaimed any intention of determining boundaries, nevertheless the Court treats the Green Line as Israel s Eastern boundary notwithstanding that neither Israel nor any Arab State recognized it as such. By its decision, the Court apparently however has recognized Israel sovereignty West of the Green Line, including West Jerusalem, perhaps an outcome not foreseen by all who initiated the application to the Court.

This article compares the Hobbesian realist and Kantian idealist analyses of international law and organizations with respect to the UN General Assembly resolutions and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on Israel's separation barrier. From the realist perspective, this case highlights the exploitation of moral claims in support of a particularist political agenda. In contrast, the idealist approach interprets the advisory opinion and resolutions as important normative expressions in the developing global system of governance based on universal human rights principles and treaty obligations.

The analysis begins with a detailed comparison of the ideological and intellectual foundations of these core approaches to international law and organizations, the evolution of this debate in the post Cold War international system, and the impact on protracted ethno-national conflicts. This provides the basis for examining the impact of both schools in the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The specific case of the UN and ICJ's involvement in the question of Israel's separation barrier is then analyzed in detail from both the realist and idealist perspectives.

The implications of this debate are of major importance, not only with respect to the specific challenges posed by terrorism and the necessary responses, but also in the wider context of the crisis in the international system at the beginning of the 21st century. The analysis concludes by noting the degree to which this case illustrates a wider process in which international legal principles are manipulated in a manner that contributes to conflict and justification of violence, conforming to the realist interpretation. While still pursuing idealist objectives, wishful thinking cannot conceal the abuse ofuniversalist claims of morality in the pursuit of war by other means.

In this paper, I address the relevance of the normative dimension of international relations against the background of the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice of July 9, 2004, with reference to the legality of the security barrier/fence being erected by the Israeli government since March of 2002. I examine different approaches to the study of norms in international relations, focusing upon the Grotian approach, which represents a middle ground between the extreme Hobbesian (Realist) and Kantian (idealist) traditions of international relations. According to the Grotian approach, international norms affect the foreign policy of individual countries through their institutionalization in the international society, usually through multilateral instruments of international law. In this sense, both the ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court of June 30, 2004, and the Advisory Opinion of the ICJ of July 9, 2004, represent and reflect those instruments. The International Court of Justice is the major legal institution of the United Nations, which is the embodiment of our international society. Hence, even if its ruling is considered biased or distorted (by Israel), it still carries an important normative and political baggage, by underlining paramount norms such as self-determination and protection of human rights.

The essay places the ICJ opinion in a broader legal and political context and argues that the failure to distinguish between democratic and non-democratic regimes characterizing the ICJ advisory opinion reflects broader trends with potentially ruinous consequences for the enterprise of human rights promotion itself. The ICJ opinion's willful ignoring of Israel's democratic character yielded a tendentious and inconsistent ruling. By contrast the Israel High Court of Justice's decision invalidating portions of Israel's security wall reflects a healthy understanding of a democracy's needs and limitations, as reflected in that court's proportionality standard of review. The ICJ willingly blurred crucial distinctions between democratic regimes that genuinely adhere, however imperfectly, to principles of human rights in their own governance, and those states and actors that do not, a distinction made all the more imperative by the events of September 11.

The judicialization of human rights in the post-Cold War era takes place against the background of a tensile relationship between human rights advocacy and democracy promotion during the Cold War. While human rights represent an essentially legal idea, democracy a political idea. In closing, the essay lays out one basic, hopefully workable, conceptual division of labor between human rights and democracy as complementary elements of a broader project of human dignity, in which human rights represents a “thin” universal conception of human dignity, while democracy offers a process whereby that conception can be “thickened” in various political, social and cultural contexts around the globe.

The growing impact of terrorist acts in the past few years has lead to dramatic changes in the internal laws of the growing number of States that suffer from terrorism, but has also lead to various attempts to adapt international law - more specifically, the International Laws of War - to the new situation or threat, as many perceive it. The Laws of War, like most areas of Public International Law, deal with the relations between nations, while hardly dealing with non-governmental entities like terrorist organisations or the individual terrorist, thereby creating an apparent legal “loophole”. One of the solutions found by States in order to deal, legally, with terrorists, was by defining them “unlawful combatants”.

This essay tries to examine the development of the term “unlawful combatant”, by examining some complications that might occur from the use of the term “unlawful combatant” as an intermediate, new status in international law. By using it as a new status. States try to exclude terrorists from finding protection under the Geneva Conventions, which are intended to safeguard various individuals during armed conflicts. After examining the term “unlawful combatant”, both from an historical and legal aspect, this essay will attempt to show that the existing Laws of War, which acknowledge only two statuses – the ‘civilian’ and the ‘combatant’ – provide a satisfactory solution to the problem of terrorism in its non-governmental sense. After exploring recent policies and legal developments in Israel and the Unites States, countries that use the term “unlawful combatant”, this essay will criticise the ambiguity of these definitions, and point out future problems that might arise from this ambiguity during armed conflicts.