The Palestinian leadership has hailed as “historic” a ruling by the top UN court that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal but the opinion drew condemnation from Israel, AFP reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had made a “decision of lies” by finding that Israel’s policies and practices “amount to annexation of large parts” of the occupied territories.

The office of Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas said it welcomed the “historic decision and demands that Israel be compelled to implement it.”

Netanyahu led a chorus of condemnation from conservative, far-right and even centrist politicians in Israel.

“The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land — not in our eternal capital Jerusalem, nor in our ancestral heritage of Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank)”, Netanyahu said in a statement.

“No decision of lies in The Hague will distort this historical truth, and similarly, the legality of Israeli settlements in all parts of our homeland cannot be disputed.”

In the English-language version of his statement, Netanyahu called the decision “absurd”, instead of “lies” as he said in the Hebrew version.

Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right national security minister and a settler himself, called the ICJ “a blatantly anti-Semitic and political organisation”.

In comments sent to AFP by a spokesperson, Ben Gvir called for annexation of the occupied territories.

Centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid said the court’s ruling was “disconnected, one-sided, tainted with anti-Semitism and lacking an understanding of the reality on the ground”.

The Palestinian presidency said: “The ICJ ruling renews hope among our people for a future free from colonisation.”

The foreign ministry called the ruling a “watershed moment”.

“Israel is under an obligation to end this illegal colonial enterprise unconditionally, and in our view, that means immediately and totally,” it said.