The interim orders issued Friday by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to Israel amid its war on Gaza are important, but their immediate implications are “limited,” some experts say.
On Friday, the ICJ issued its preliminary ruling in the case, brought by South Africa in December, which accuses Israel of carrying out genocide in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
After rejecting Israel's request to dismiss the case, the ICJ issued interim instructions to Israel to allow aid into Gaza while taking all measures within its power to prevent acts of genocide. Additionally, Israel must preserve evidence of all its actions inside Gaza and report to the ICJ within a month, she said.
The ICJ also noted its grave concern about the fate of Israelis captured by Hamas during its raid into Israel on October 7 and called for their immediate release.
While South Africa has claimed that those instructions implicitly translate as a call for an immediate ceasefire, Israel has noted the absence of that specific wording and confirmed that it will continue its three-month campaign against Gaza.
“Really, the only body that can stop the Israeli bombing of Gaza is Israel,” said Gerry Simpson, a law professor at the London School of Economics. “However, this makes it even more difficult for [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu confidently states that he defends the West and the rules-based order.”
Pressure mounts on Israel's allies
While a final ruling may still be years away, the court has determined that the genocide accusations leveled by South Africa have merit and therefore cannot be dismissed as baseless by Israel and its international backers.
Crucially, the ruling raises the possibility that Tel Aviv's allies in Washington, London and the European Union could even face the prospect of being implicated in aiding and abetting the genocide at some future date.
Friday's ruling will also likely have implications beyond those specified in court, Simpson said. “This also speaks to how the public views war. No matter where you get your information from, there is always the suspicion of bias in the reporting. This preliminary ruling offers something different. “This is a judicial verdict based on a good faith reading of the facts.”
Interpretations of the court's findings are already polarizing much of the political community. While South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor hailed it as nothing short of a triumph, others seemed less delighted.
Speaking after the verdict, Netanyahu asserted that the court had “justly rejected the outrageous demand” to deprive Israel of what he called its “basic right to defend itself” by ordering a halt to the fighting. However, he continued: “The mere assertion that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians is not only false, it is scandalous, and the court's willingness to even discuss this is a disgrace that will not be erased for generations.”
Right-wing Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was more direct, simply tweeting “The Hague Shmague“.
A case of genocide is “plausible”
So far, more than 26,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have died during Israel's war on Gaza, while thousands more are lost under the rubble and presumed dead. Additionally, some 64,500 people have been injured by Israeli strikes on the densely populated Gaza Strip, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said this week.
While Israel's emphasis on no specific mention of a ceasefire was predictable, other themes were less likely to feature in Tel Israel's public account of the ruling.
“The way South Africa and others will interpret the order is also that Israel's supporters have basically been warned,” said Antonios Tzanakopoulos, a professor of public international law at Oxford University.
“The ICJ has determined that the case of genocide is at least plausible. Therefore, if third states continue to provide money and weapons to Israel, they now do so knowing that they may be aiding and abetting genocide, something that all signatories to the convention cannot do,” he said.
While stopping short of accusing Israel of committing genocide, Italy stopped all arms shipments to Israel after the Hamas attacks on October 7, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced a week ago.
“This is what we mean by law enforcement,” Tzanakopoulos said. “States are not physical things. You can't send them to prison. But the kind of pressure that comes with rulings like this, and the actions of states like Italy, make it more difficult to cooperate with Israel,” he stated.
Under the terms of the 1948 Genocide Convention, all states have a binding obligation not only to refrain from being complicit in genocide but also to prevent it, said Katherine Iliopoulos, legal advisor for the MENA program of the International Commission of Jurists.
“I think we can deduce from the provisional measures imposed that the Court considers that there is a serious risk of genocide in Gaza. “This is important because it puts all States on formal notice of this risk, triggering their duty to take concrete measures to prevent genocide, including by ceasing the sale and export of weapons and other assistance that could facilitate genocidal acts,” he said.
Iliopoulos highlighted actions already underway by legal groups, such as those in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, to prevent the export of weapons from their countries to Israel on the grounds that they could be used to commit international crimes in Gaza. . “Today's ruling will increase pressure on these and other countries to immediately stop arms exports to Israel,” he said.
Compliance remains an issue
A final ruling in South Africa's genocide case against Israel may take years. Furthermore, as previous preliminary rulings have shown, compliance remains an issue.
The 2022 ruling against Myanmar for its persecution of the Rohingya minority achieved only a partial turnaround, the United Nations noted in August. Furthermore, that same year, the ICJ ruling against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine was simply ignored.
However, this is the first case against a state so closely linked to Western powers, whose existence depends largely on their arms supply and diplomatic cover.
The extent to which those states may now be in legal danger could help determine the shape and duration of the war.
