(Washington, D.C.; 2/21/2025) – The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), the nation’s umbrella group of Muslim associations, welcomes yesterday’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) grant of the African Union’s (AU) request to participate in its case on Israel’s obligations regarding crucial UN activities in occupied Palestine.
Thursday’s ICJ permission to the African Union closely follows the continental bloc of 55 nation’s clear Summit declaration on Sunday that the Israelis are “committing genocide” against the Palestinian people “and must be prosecuted internationally.”
The final statement of the AU’s 38th summit held in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa from February 15 to 16 included an unequivocal “call for an end to cooperation and normalization with Israel until it ends its occupation and aggression against Palestine.”
Yesterday’s ICJ action “authorized the African Union … to participate in the advisory proceedings on the Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations, and Third States in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal said in a statement:
“After the AU’s explicit condemnation of Israeli genocide against the Palestinians the ICJ’s inclusion of the AU in this legal proceeding adds much greater weight to what is essentially an international outcry against the perpetual, brazen Israeli violation of the most fundamental human rights of the Palestinians.
“This case is important because it puts the Israelis on trial for two egregious acts: blocking the international community from delivering the most basic humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, whom they are brutally, systematically and categorically persecuting; and dismantling the collective and independent institutional function of the world’s nations in occupied Palestine.
“The ICJ case, and now the AU, is vindicating the occupied Palestinian people’s indisputable humanitarian right to control and have access to their own food, water, power, security on their land, free mobility, and medical treatment, as well as their God-given political rights to self-determination and complete autonomy in their civil society formation and international relations.
“What gives ICJ’s admission of the AU into the case so much significance is the AU’s forthright Summit call of its 55 member nations to totally end all relations – diplomatic, economic, and cultural – with the Israeli entity until it ceases its genocide and persecution of the Palestinians and its systematic program of usurpation of Palestinian land.
“This completes the global isolation of the Israelis, marking them before all the world with an indelible moral stain that brands them as a complete communal pariah.”
USCMO has nothing but praise for the AU Summit statement’s honesty and moral courage on behalf of the Palestinians, the world’s most persecuted people at the hands of the Israelis.
We also applaud the AU’s unflinching follow-through on its Summit statement by requesting to participate in what we hope will be the ICJ’s strive to inscribe justice in the ledger of humanity for the human rights of the Palestinians and to ascribe due legal recompense for the Israeli violators of it.
