The ICJ ruling today that claims that Israel's occupation is illegal must first prove that the territory is occupied to begin with. And a careful look at its language shows that they are well aware that they are fudging the facts.
They give a brief history of the conflict and the borders:
The territorial boundaries of Mandatory Palestine were laid down by various instruments, in particular on the eastern border, by a British memorandum of 16 September 1922 and the Anglo-Transjordanian Treaty of 20 February 1928.....By resolution 62 (1948) of 16 November 1948, the Security Council decided that “an armistice shall be established in all sectors of Palestine” and called upon the parties directly involved in the conflict to seek agreement to this end. In conformity with this decision, general armistice agreements were concluded in 1949 in Rhodes between Israel and its neighbouring States through mediation by the United Nations, fixing the armistice demarcation lines between Israeli and Arab forces....In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created to represent the Palestinian people.....In 1967, an armed conflict (also known as the “Six-Day War”) broke out between Israel and neighbouring countries Egypt, Syria and Jordan. By the time hostilities had ceased, Israeli forces occupied all the territories of Palestine under British Mandate beyond the Green Line (see paragraph 54 above)....From 1967 onwards, Israel started to establish or support settlements in the territories it occupied ......On 15 November 1988, referring to resolution 181 (II) “which partitioned Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State”, the PLO “proclaim[ed] the establishment of the State of Palestine”Following an increase in acts of violence from the West Bank, in the early 2000s Israel began building a “continuous fence” (hereinafter the “wall”) largely in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. ... Notwithstanding the Court’s opinion in 2004, finding “[t]he construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, and its associated rĂ©gime [to be] contrary to international law” (Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Advisory Opinion, I.C.J. Reports 2004 (I), p. 201, para. 163), the construction of the wall continued, as well as the expansion of settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Magically, the territory transformed from "the territories of Palestine under the British Mandate" - to which Israel has a claim, since the 1949 armistice lines were never meant to be permanent borders - into "Occupied Palestinian Territory."
Saying that territory changed hands is a legal matter. One should be able to define when, exactly, the territories went from being British to becoming "Palestinian." Was it 1947? 1949? 1967? 1988? 1993? The ICJ mysteriously cannot say.
Because it has never happened.
It also does not mention the legal status of the territories between 1948 and 1967, vaguely referring to "Arab forces" as if they are Palestinian.
Interestingly, the Jordanian renunciation of any claims to the West Bank in 1988 are also not mentioned by the ICJ - because that would go against its narrative that Israel has been occupying "Palestinian territory" since 1967.
By conflating British Mandate Palestine with "Palestinian territory," the ICJ is leaving the door open to saying that Israel occupies Palestinian territory even within the Green Line.
Their reference to the PLO accepting Resolution 181 also implies that the Palestinians may have claims to the territories they rejected in 1947.
Every fact is slanted towards giving Palestinians legal rights that the court cannot say when they took effect or exactly what those territories are, publishing contradictory indications that have only one thing in common: denying a sovereign state its rights to territory it has had legal claim to since 1922 while giving maximal rights to an entity that was never a state in its history.
All this legal language does not mean this ruling has anything to do with the law.
