Shadows across the Path 443that the general laws of war apply to nuclear weapons as they do to con-
ventional ones— including, crucially, a ban on the use of unnecessarily
indiscriminate weapons. Th e Court was able to state that, because of
their indiscriminate nature, the use of nuclear weapons would “gener-
ally” be unlawful. But on an evenly divided vote (which was therefore de-
cided by the vote of the president), the Court carefully stopped short of
holding that the use of nuclear weapons could never be lawful. It left open
the possibility that their use might be legal in “an extreme circumstance of
self- defence, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”
Early in the twenty- fi rst century, the Court became involved, for the fi rst
time, in the long- running dispute between Israel and its various Arab neigh-
bors. In 2004, the UN General Assembly obtained an advisory opinion as to
the lawfulness of Israel’s construction of a barrier between its territory and
that of the occupied West Bank of the Jordan River. It has been observed
that the Court held Israel to be in violation of the Palestinians’ right to self-
determination. It made a number of other fi ndings against Israel, includ-
ing violations of the Covenant on Civil and Po liti cal Rights. It also held the
Israeli policy of building settlement for its own population in the Occupied
Territories to be a violation of the Geneva Convention rules on occupation
of territory. Finally, the Court pronounced that the right of self- defense (i.e.,
military action) cannot be invoked against terrorism that occurs within an
occupied area. Th e occupying state must instead use the mechanisms of the
criminal law.
Th e End of the Cold War
Th e ending of the Cold War was heralded by the program of perestroika
(literally “restructuring”) launched by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
aft er 1985. It was a heady period, when it sometimes seemed as if a day did not
pass without some kind of radical departure from past ways. Th e new spirit
was evident in the international legal profession, too. In 1988, two socialist
lawyers, Rein Mullerson and V. S. Vereshchetin (a future World Court judge)
presented a paper on “New Th inking in International Law.” Th e changes an-
nounced were actually less than drastic, but a fresh spirit was certainly in
the air. Th ere was now to be increased recognition given to the interdepen-
dence of states (with less insistence on state sovereignty and in de pen dence),