How the ICJ ruling could finally break Israel’s siege of Gaza
People mourn victims of an Israeli bombardment outside a morgue in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on 14 November 2023
David Hearst writes in Middle East Eye on 26 January 2024:
Friday’s ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) drives something bigger and more powerful than a D9 bulldozer through the western position supporting Israel’s blitzkrieg on Gaza, which has continued for nearly four months.
The ruling establishes that what is going on in Gaza is not a war aimed at disabling an enemy militant group, but an operation aimed at disabling a people, and a nation. There can be no more momentous legal judgement in the history of the conflict, certainly in the current century.
This judgement reestablishes the morality, impartiality and standing of international law, and will show the impunity that Israel has been granted by its major arms suppliers and backers for what it is: a license to kill.
There can be no bigger hole knocked through the position of a US administration that bogusly claimed “diplomacy is back”, and then went on to to defend and furnish the most murderous bombardment in the recent history of this conflict.
Israel is now in the dock on a charge of genocide and will be obliged to report back to the court in a month, for its accuser South Africa to review, on the measures it has taken to prevent incitement to genocide and genocide itself and to allow more aid into Gaza. Yes, there will be disappointment that the ICJ stopped short of demanding an immediate ceasefire. The court did this on the legal grounds that only one side in this war is recognised as a state.
Palestinians don’t need a court judgment validating their suffering. They were expecting a measure that would end this genocide, rather than putting the ball in Israel’s court to act in a way that everybody knows it will not. But Israel had already signalled its intention to ignore any ruling of the ICJ, so it is not to Israel that anyone should look to change this situation.
The ICJ ruling’s only power is to change western policy allowing US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to wring his hands as if Washington is impotent to stop the daily slaughter. It plainly is not.
Clear urgency
A judgment such as this also provides much-needed force to several court actions around the world involving lesser, but equally important, charges of war crimes. If the designation of apartheid was a huge blow to Israel’s attempts to establish itself as a normal, western democracy, the genocide label surely nails the lid on the coffin.
Clearly, the court did not believe Israel’s defence, and in delivering the judgement, ICJ president Joan Donoghue made ample use of South Africa’s evidence. The South African team is right to claim victory.
The urgency of this ruling is plain for all to see. More than 750,000 people are facing “catastrophic hunger” in Gaza, according to the United Nations. The lack of clean water is leading to a spike in waterborne diseases, such as diarrhoea, which is a major child killer.