The verdict stressed that Israel’s permission for and protection of settlements led to violence against Palestinian civilians.
It called on the United Nations General Assembly as well as the UN Security Council to consider taking further action.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, welcomed the ruling as a “victory for justice” and called on Israel to end its occupation “immediately.”
The ICJ ruling is unlikely to lead to any change in the Israeli government’s policies, with pro-settlement ministers a key part of the prime minister’s coalition.
‘False decision’
Responding to the verdict, Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the court’s ruling as a “false decision”.
“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land – not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria [West Bank],” he said.
“No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth, just as the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested,” he added.
Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, also rejected the “one-sided and ill-judged advisory opinion of the ICJ. Their words undermine the entire notion of the process of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians”.
Betzalel Smotrich, the hard-Right finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, also slammed the court’s ruling, instead calling on the government to annex the West Bank.
Israel took control within the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights in the six-day war in 1967. It annexed the Golan Heights in 1981 but would later withdraw from Gaza in 2005, pulling out some 8,500 Jewish settlers.
Some 500,000 Israelis are estimated to live across the West Bank, with some living in outposts deep in Palestinian territory.
Settler violence against Palestinians has grown in recent years, in particular since the Oct 7 attacks.