SELF-DEFENSE? Israel claims that what it is doing in the West Bank is justified under the law of self-defence. This claim has no validity. Twenty years ago the @CIJ_ICJ determined that Israel could not invoke self-defence under article 51 of the UN Charter to justify its Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). This past July the Court indicated that Israel’s very presence in the oPt is itself unlawful. As an ongoing unlawful use of force, Israel’s occupation of the OPT cannot be justified by any claim of self-defence. Israel’s perversion of the law on self-defence must be recognized for what it is: a brazen attempt to provide an imprimatur of ‘legality’ to the maintenance of its unlawful aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of the State of Palestine. If Israel truly wants to achieve its claimed security, the best and most obvious way to do that would be to cease its colonization of another people’s land, withdraw from all of it, and make appropriate reparation for damage caused (as requested by the ICJ), while being sure to apologize to its victims on the way out.