In a recent statement issued by Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury has given his unequivocal support to the Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) calling for Israel’s immediate and unconditional withdrawal from the ‘occupied Palestinian territories’ and reparation to be paid to the Palestinians for damage attributable to the ‘occupation.’
It is price quoting his statement in full:
‘The Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice (19 July 2024) makes definitively clear that Israel’s presence within the Occupied Palestinian Territories is illegal and wishes to finish as rapidly as possible.
At a time when the world is marked by increasing violations of international law – and commitment to a rules-based system is in query – it’s imperative that governments all over the world reaffirm their unwavering commitment to all decisions by the International Court of Justice, regardless of the situation. International law protects our shared humanity, and safeguards human dignity and flourishing. To resist a world where actions similar to torture, hostage-taking and indiscriminate violence develop into the norm, we must apply the law without fear or favour in all circumstances. But for too long it has been applied and upheld in a selective manner that threatens our common peace and security. Now is the time to reverse that deeply damaging trend.
‘Having visited our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters again and again over recent many years, it is obvious to me that the regime imposed by successive Israeli governments within the Occupied Palestinian Territories is one in every of systemic discrimination. Through annexing Palestinian land for illegal settlements, depriving Palestinians access to their very own natural resources, and imposing a system of military rule that denies them safety and justice, the State of Israel has been denying the Palestinian people dignity, freedom and hope.  I’m particularly aware of how that is impacting Palestinian Christians, threatening their future and viability. It is obvious that ending the occupation is a legal and moral necessity.
‘I pray that each one UN member states respond positively to this Advisory Opinion by ensuring their individual and customary actions are consistent with it – and pave the way in which for the realisation of the Palestinian people’s fundamental right to self-determination.’
From a Christian perspective it’s unquestionable that the rule of law must be upheld (Romans 13:1-7) and that where one group of individuals is treating one other people unjustly then this must stop – ‘Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5:24). On these two basic points we will agree with the archbishop. Nevertheless, his statement as a complete is deeply problematic for 4 reasons.
First, we cannot simply say (because the archbishop’s language about ‘unwavering commitment to all decisions’ implies) that whatever a court has said should be thought to be unquestionably correct. After all, Jesus was crucified on the premise of judgments made against him by each Jewish and Roman legal authorities, but, as I’m sure the archbishop would agree, that doesn’t mean that these judgments were right.
Secondly, the ICJ was not unanimous in its opinion. Its own Vice President, the Ugandan Christian Julia Sebutinde, submitted an excoriating dissenting thirty-six page judgment through which she argues that almost all opinion from the ICJ lacked the obligatory information and jurisdiction to provide an opinion on the matter, misapplied the relevant law, ‘circumvents and potentially jeopardizes’ the legally binding agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority entered into by each side within the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, and if applied would have dire practical consequences.
The archbishop completely fails to even acknowledge, let alone engage with, the arguments recommend by Sebutinde, and echoed by other commentators on the ICJ’s judgement.
Thirdly, the archbishop simply assumes, slightly than argues, that the lands in dispute between Israel and the Palestinians are occupied territories and due to this fact all Jewish settlement in them is against the law. However, the mandate for Palestine given to Britain by the League of Nations to create a homeland for the Jewish people and the accepted legal principle ‘uti possidetis iuris’ (‘as you possess under law’) which holds that newly formed sovereign states should retain the identical borders that the preceding political entity possessed prior to their independence, mean that the Jewish state formed in 1948 has legal title to all of the territory of the previous mandate (including what are actually called the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which were illegally annexed by Jordan from 1950-1967). It follows that there isn’t a Israeli occupation, and that Jewish settlement is just not illegal.
It must also be noted that under the Oslo Accords the overwhelming majority of Palestinians within the West Bank and East Jerusalem live in areas governed by the Palestinian Authority and that under these accords the everlasting status of those areas and the territory currently governed by Israel is to be decided by direct, bilateral ‘final status’ negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and appeal to external parties (similar to the ICJ) is specifically forbidden.
Fourthly, the archbishop ignores the sensible results which might flow from the implementation of the ICJ judgment.
It would mean the forced eviction of upwards of 700,000 Jewish people and would cause administrative and economic chaos, particularly in Jerusalem where it might divide town in two. If it happened immediately, because the ICJ suggests, it’s virtually certain, given the current circumstances, that there can be armed conflict between the assorted Palestinian factions for control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Whoever was victorious, the result can be an impoverished authoritarian kleptocracy allied to Iran that abused human rights, oppressed women and minority groups and depended for its legitimacy on its willingness to proceed to wage an Islamic holy war to destroy the remaining of Israel by either killing, expelling, or subjugating its Jewish inhabitants.
In addition, as military experts have acknowledged, the power of Israel to defend itself in such a war can be severely compromised by an entire withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and this is able to be contrary to the principle set out in UN Security Council resolution 242, and affirmed by the Lambeth Conference of Anglican Bishops in 1988, that Israel should have the ability to live ‘in peace inside secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.’ To put the matter most starkly, while the archbishop has repeatedly deplored the Jewish Holocaust in Europe in the course of the twentieth century, what he is looking for runs the danger of establishing the conditions for one more such Holocaust to happen on this century.
So, is there a greater way forward? Arguably there’s.
- The defeat of the present attack on Israel by Iran and its proxies, with the discharge of the remaining living hostages from 7 October and the return of the bodies of the dead.
- Work by the Israeli political and judicial authorities and Israeli human rights groups to forestall and punish abuses of Palestinian human rights and the creation of recent settlements illegal under Jewish law.
- Work by Palestinian civil society groups to put the groundwork for an eventual Palestinian state alongside Israel that’s economically prosperous, democratically governed by a reformed Palestinian Authority, respects the rule of law and human rights, and ceases to hunt Israel’s destruction. In particular, Palestinian young people must now not be taught that Jews are the evil enemy who should be fought.
- Eventual final status negotiations under the terms of the Oslo Accords that bring about an agreed final settlement of who gets what territory and under what conditions.
It is these sorts of developments for which the archbishop must be calling.
A final point which must be noted is that something which the archbishop can address directly because the senior bishop of the Anglican Communion, and which he needs to deal with, is the rejection of Jewish Christians by Palestinian Anglicans. This is a difficulty that has been highlighted very powerfully by the Church of England author Giles Fraser in his recent essay ‘The Problem with Palestinian Church’.
Fraser is a Church of England minister married to an Israeli Jewish wife and in his essay, he explains why he goes to the Levanda Street Pentecostal Church when in Israel slightly than to an Anglican Church. Fraser writes: ‘There are bad eggs in every Church. But there isn’t a doubt that there’s a radical anti-Israeli side to Palestinian Christianity, to such an extent that parts of the Church have developed something of a distaste for the Jewish underpinnings of Christianity, including even the very presence of the Hebrew scriptures throughout the Christian Bible.’
He then goes on to recall his experience of an Anglican eucharist in a church in southern Tel Aviv that had been led by a young priest who ‘was so obviously Jewish and Israeli, which is extremely unusual’:
‘So over coffee after church I asked him the story of his conversion, and the way he had come to be confirmed as an Anglican. ‘Were you ordained within the Diocese of Jerusalem?’ I asked him. ‘Oh no’, he replied. ‘They would not ordain me; I’m originally Jewish Israeli.’ Now, I even have not been able to verify his story. But I believed him. And whether it is true, the Diocese of Jerusalem can be the one Diocese on the planet that may discriminate in ordaining people on the premise of their ethnicity. I remain shocked by his story.’
He continues, ‘I don’t have any great animus against the Palestinian Church. And were I to attempt to hold a congregation together in Gaza or the West Bank under present circumstances, I’d inevitably need to be alongside my people of their suffering and feel great anger towards those that were harming them. But for therefore long as this anger is misdirected towards those Jews who need to live free from attack in Israel, I’ll keep going to the extraordinary Levanda Street. I pray for my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Christ, but I won’t be joining them.’
As Fraser notes, this division between Palestinian and Jewish Christians, and the Palestinian rejection of the Jewish roots of Christianity that sometimes accompanies it (including the rejection of the Old Testament and even the claim that Jesus was not Jewish but Palestinian) is shocking. It goes directly against the teaching of Paul in Romans 9/11 and in his letters as a complete and as such is totally heretical. The Jewish people cannot, ever, be rejected by Christians because they’re the olive tree into which all other Christians, Palestinians included, have been engrafted (Romans 11:13-24). Fraser’s witness to this problem is just not alone, others have noted the identical phenomenon, and it’s one which the archbishop has the authority and the duty to deal with. He should accomplish that.
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