Last week, 17 judges from the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in the case of South Africa v. Israel on the question of whether Israel may be committing genocide against the Palestinian people in waging its war against Hamas in Gaza, as well as on whether to uphold South Africa’s request for an injunction against further hostilities. The court’s provisional finding was that it would hear the case and that, while it did so, Israel could continue the war, but should report back in a month to demonstrate that it was not in fact committing genocide. The court noted in paragraph 14 of its ruling how this legal approach limited what it could consider, despite a series of United Nations resolutions drawing attention to other legal dimensions of the case. As law scholar Oona Hathaway explains, there was never any chance that the ICJ would return an immediate genocide ruling. This made it unlikely that the ICJ would issue a one-sided order that Israel stop its attacks on Hamas, as South Africa had asked, when the court—which only has jurisdiction over states—could not order Hamas to do the same.

Source: The North Africa Journal January 30, 2024 13:50 UTC