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OPINIONOPINION,
Opinions|Israel-Palestine conflict


THE ICJ RULING WAS A LEGAL VICTORY AT THE COST OF PALESTINIAN LIVES

The January 26 court decision may be a historic one, but it does not shield the
people of Gaza from the Israeli genocidal war machine.

 * Andrew Mitrovica
   Al Jazeera columnist

Published On 28 Jan 202428 Jan 2024

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Pro-Palestinian protesters attend a demonstration outside the International
Court of Justice as judges rule on emergency measures against Israel following
accusations by South Africa that the Israeli military operation in Gaza is a
state-led genocide, in The Hague, Netherlands, on January 26, 2024
[Reuters/Piroschka van de Wouw]

I need to preface this column with the following proviso: Given the scale of the
cruel circumstances, my reading of the much-anticipated preliminary ruling by
the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in response to South Africa’s brief
accusing Israel of genocide is of little, if any, importance.

Since the court issued its findings, I have chosen instead to heed the reactions
of the Palestinian diaspora and their surviving brothers and sisters in what
remains of Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and beyond.


KEEP READING

list of 4 items
list 1 of 4


SURGE IN ISRAELI ATTACKS ON GAZA CITY, CASUALTIES OVERWHELM HOSPITAL

list 2 of 4


ISRAEL CONTINUES TO POUND GAZA, ISSUE NEW EVACUATION THREATS

list 3 of 4


‘ROOTED IN THIS LAND UNTIL DEATH’: A PALESTINIAN FAMILY’S OLIVE HARVEST

list 4 of 4


UPDATES: ISRAEL ATTACKS HOSPITAL, BESIEGES SCHOOL SHELTER IN NORTH GAZA

end of list

Their voices count. Not mine.

Of course, more than 26,000 Palestinians – and counting – no longer have a
voice. They are dead. Annihilated by a fanatical Israeli cabinet that has killed
hundreds more Palestinians while a gallery of white, Western columnists like me
parse the significance and merits of the court’s just announced “provisional”
measures.

We must always remember that blatant and instructive fact.

Two camps have emerged.


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The first has hailed the court’s decision as a watershed moment. Israel has been
held finally to account after decades of evading accountability for the litany
of outrages it has committed against generation after generation of
Palestinians.

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The other lasting and overarching import of the court’s decrees is that Israel’s
Western-backed and tolerated licence to displace, maim and kill Palestinians
without consequences is over.

Near unanimously, the court was convinced that South Africa made a plausible
case demonstrating that Israel has displayed the intent to execute genocide.

As a result, the court is required, by international law, to proceed with a full
hearing and, ultimately, to render a verdict on the seminal question: Is Israel
guilty of the crime of genocide in Gaza?

Near unanimously, the court, in effect, rejected the establishment media notion
that the calamity unfolding in Gaza was a “war” between adversaries; but,
rather, is prima facie evidence of a deliberate campaign by Israel to erase,
wholesale, a people and a nation.

As such, Israel was required by international law to enact “immediate” steps to
stop the horrors it has unleashed with such unremitting ferocity over the past
four months.

Towards that end, the court instructed Israel, near unanimously, to deliver a
report to South Africa in a month for its review.

Israel is obliged to detail how, when and where it has taken the compulsory
measures not only to prevent genocide, but also the incitement to genocide and
to allow humanitarian aid to reach the starving and destitute souls who call the
devastated enclave home.

The implicit meaning of the court’s order was that Israel had to adopt a
ceasefire.

As South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, explained to reporters
outside The Hague: “I believe that in exercising the order, there would have to
be a ceasefire. Without it, the order doesn’t actually work.”

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The irony is as inescapable as it is delicious.

An apartheid regime has been directed by a court to answer to a country that, in
due and patient course, freed itself from another apartheid regime.

The court’s judgement is particularly satisfying because it represents a stiff
and damning rebuttal to the now discredited claim made by the usual diplomats in
the usual capitals that South Africa’s persuasive petition was “meritless” and
“counterproductive”.

To its credit, the court has dealt an emphatic, fatal blow to that hollow bit of
rhetorical chicanery.

In a tangible and historic precedent, Israel and its complicit, evangelical
sponsors, have been put on notice by the ICJ.

About time.

“History – with a capital H – was made today,” the Palestinian writer and
editor, Mouin Rabbani wrote on X. “Israel is as of today associated with the
crime of genocide primarily as perpetrator, not victim. Israel’s policies
towards the Palestinian people will henceforth be judged on their own merits
rather than against the long shadow of European history.”

In this broader context, Rabbani argues that the understandable chagrin over the
justices not calling explicitly for a “ceasefire” is moot since Israel signalled
– publicly and repeatedly – that it would continue with its “killing rage”
whatever the court’s edicts.


Still, there is a legion of disappointed Palestinians interviewed by Al Jazeera
and the few other news organisations with a permanent presence in Gaza.

They described the court’s refusal to demand a ceasefire and halt Israel’s
latest invasion as a predictable “failure” that has only fuelled their abiding
mistrust of the “international community” and the so-called “global justice
system”.

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“Although I don’t trust the international community, I had a small glimmer of
hope that the court would rule on a ceasefire in Gaza,” 54-year-old Ahmed
al-Naffar said from outside the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza’s Deir
el-Balah on Friday.

He is not alone.

“The court gave Israel another month to continue killing, displacing, and
starving us,” Gaza-based journalist Aseel Mousa told the Middle East Eye.
“Israel [has] an opportunity to continue to exterminate us while supplying us
with scraps of the food, medicine, and essential life necessities we need.”

The pervasive disappointment is compounded by the ICJ’s glaring and jarring
hypocrisy.

Writing from occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian poet, Mohammed El-Kurd, posted
this blunt tweet on X: “Lots of people are making excuses. The ICJ can and has
historically called for a ceasefire. In 2022, it demanded ‘Russia shall
immediately suspend the military operation it commenced [in Ukraine.]’”

I oscillate between these two, disparate perspectives.

The comeuppance that Israel may or may not receive at The Hague several months
or years hence will be deserving and long overdue.

But the imperative of now; the imperative to halt the suffering and killing of
Palestinians is the more urgent necessity.

The optimist in me hopes that the ICJ’s ruling hastens, somehow, the end – for
good – of the murderous madness and the quick return of Israelis held by Hamas
to their despondent families.

The pessimist in me suspects that nothing will change soon on the ground in Gaza
and the occupied West Bank. The slaughter of innocents will go on. Palestinian
children, the old, and infirm will succumb to hunger and disease as their
families huddle in a sea of flimsy, rain-soaked tents while Israel turns the
whole of Gaza into dust and memory.

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And, despite the ICJ’s injunctions, much of the world will enable Israel’s
wanton siege and carnage of Gaza today and tomorrow as it did yesterday.

Yet, the flippant few who dismiss the ICJ’s stinging rebuff of Israel as
symbolic or irrelevant should take careful note of how Tel Aviv and Washington
have greeted the court’s ruling.

For its formulaic part, Israel has trotted out the tired canard that the ICJ is
a hive of “anti-Semitic bias”.

What an unserious reply to a serious indictment.

Meanwhile, in a calculated and cynical attempt to divert attention from the
remarkable proceedings at The Hague, the White House announced a suspension of
its relatively paltry aid to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine
Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in light of Israeli allegations that some of
the organisation’s staff were implicated in the October 7 attacks.

Convenient timing, wouldn’t you say?

South Africa’s daring gambit at the ICJ may already be paying welcomed dividends
with word that a tentative agreement is close to release the Israeli captives in
exchange for a temporary ceasefire.


So, take a deep, well-earned bow, South Africa.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily
reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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