The order of the International Court of Justice on South Africa’s request for provisional measures to prevent genocide in the Gaza Strip is, in the words of The Economist, a “stinging rebuke” to Israel. The most enthusiastic media advocate of Israel’s continuing war in Gaza, The Economist, led with a headline that read “Charging Israel with genocide makes a mockery of the ICJ”. For the Court to pass provisional orders, it needed to be persuaded that the measures South Africa had requested were linked to the Palestinian rights that were plausibly threatened. In other words, the interim measures South Africa had requested had to be relevant in warding off the plausible risk of genocide for Palestinians in Gaza. The ICJ’s judges, it wrote, in response to the Court’s order, “... risk weakening the Genocide Convention and the ICJ itself.

Source: The Telegraph January 28, 2024 10:53 UTC