The UN’s top court ruled on Friday that Israel must avoid genocidal acts in Gaza and allow “urgently needed” humanitarian aid into the beleaguered region, in a case that has garnered global attention.
The court urged Israel to avoid any potential genocidal crimes as it continues its military assault in the Gaza Strip, but stopped short of mandating a halt.
Israel is obligated to take “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians,” according to the court’s ruling.
At this point, the ICJ was not assessing whether Israel was actually committing genocide in Gaza; that procedure would take several years.
However, the court advised Israel to “take all measures in its power to prevent” conduct that could violate the UN Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948 as the world reeled from the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust.
It also urged Israel to “prevent and punish” any incitement to genocide.
South Africa brought the action, accusing Israel of violating the UN Genocide Convention.
During two days of hearings earlier this month in the gilded hall of the Peace Palace, where the ICJ is located, lawyers from both sides clashed over the meaning of this Convention.
South Africa accused Israel of “genocidal” measures meant to “destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial, and ethnical group.”
It urged the court to force Israel to “immediately suspend” its military operations in Gaza so that humanitarian aid may reach civilians there.
‘Grossly distorted’
Israel condemned the lawsuit as a “grossly distorted story” and stated that if any genocidal deeds had occurred, they were committed against Israel during the October 7 Hamas attacks.
“What Israel seeks by operating in Gaza is not to destroy a people, but to protect a people, its people, who are under attack on multiple fronts,” said Tal Becker, Israel’s top lawyer.
The question now is whether the court’s rulings will be followed.
Although its decisions are legally binding, it lacks a means to enforce them, and they are sometimes entirely ignored — for example, it ordered Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already intimated that Israel will not abide by any ruling, declaring “no one will stop us,” including a verdict in The Hague.
However, experts believe that the verdict may have concrete effects on the ground, in addition to its tremendous symbolic impact.
“It makes it much harder for other states to continue to support Israel in the face of a neutral third party finding that there is a risk of genocide,” said Juliette McIntyre, an international law expert at the University of South Australia.
“States may withdraw military or other support for Israel in order to avoid this,” she went on to say.
The Hamas strike on October 7 killed around 1,140 persons in Israel, the majority of them were civilians, according to an AFP calculation based on official Israeli numbers.
According to the Hamas government’s health ministry, Israeli bombardments and military offensives have killed at least 26,083 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since then, with around 70% of them being women, young children, and teenagers.