Morocco was one of 87 countries that voted in the December 30 UN General Assembly vote to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to address the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
As 26 nations voted against and 53 abstained, Arab countries unanimously voted in favor, including those that have normalized their relations with Israel such as Morocco.
China and Russia also voted in favor, while Western states were divided.
The United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy opposed the resolution, while Belgium, Portugal and Ireland voted in favor. France abstained, as did Switzerland.
The text urges the UN court based in The Hague to determine “the legal consequences of Israel’s continuing violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.”
The resolution, titled “Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories,” calls on the ICJ to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory.”
The text points out the Israeli executive’s measures “to alter the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem.”
Ahead of the vote, Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan called the resolution a “moral stain” on the “politicized and morally bankrupt United Nations.”
“No international organization can decide whether the Jewish people are an occupier in their own homeland,” he said.
Israel condemned the General Assembly vote on Saturday, with newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land nor occupiers in our eternal capital Jerusalem and no U.N. resolution can distort that historical truth.”
In a video message, Netanyahu said that Israel was not bound by what he called a “despicable decision” from the international body.
Netanyahu has set settlement expansion as a priority for his government, an executive which includes various political parties advocating for the annexation of West Bank lands that have illegal Israeli settlements built on them.
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