\n<\/p>\n
While Palestinians in Gaza die in ever-increasing numbers from starvation each day and a growing number of legal scholars, aid officials and politicians have begun describing Israel\u2019s actions as genocide, a definitive ruling on the question by the world\u2019s top court will be a long time coming.<\/p>\n
Experts on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said a judgment on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is unlikely before the end of 2027 at the earliest, amid warnings that the international community should not use the court\u2019s glacial proceedings as an excuse to put off action to stop the killing.<\/p>\n
Israel was originally due to present its rebuttal to the genocide charge brought by South Africa on Monday, but the court has granted its lawyers a six-month extension. The panel of 17 judges accepted Israel\u2019s argument that it needed more than the nine months allotted to prepare its case, because they claimed \u201cevidentiary issues\u201d in South Africa\u2019s presentation meant \u201cthe scope of the case remained unclear\u201d.<\/p>\n
The South African legal team countered that none of the arguments given by Israeli lawyers were a legitimate reason for delay, and dragging out the case was unjustifiable in view of the humanitarian emergency in Gaza. But the court sided with Israel, which now has until next January to present its case.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think [the ICJ is] being really cautious here because of the political climate,\u201d said Juliette McIntyre, a senior lecturer in law at the University of South Australia. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to be accused of just running roughshod over Israel\u2019s procedural rights and finding that it\u2019s committed genocide without fully giving them an opportunity to respond.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since its founding in 1945, the ICJ has always favoured circumspection over speed in its role as ultimate arbitrator between nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ICJ is known for its slow deliberation. It is 80 years old and it wants to work in a certain way,\u201d said Iva Vuku\u0161i\u0107, assistant professor in international history at Utrecht University.<\/p>\n
After Israel presents its defence next January, each side would typically be given time to put together a further round of arguments to counter each other\u2019s points and new developments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second round is usually around six months each, so that\u2019s another year, and then that brings us to January 2027,\u201d said Michael Becker, who served as a legal officer at the ICJ from 2010 to 2014, and who is now assistant professor of international human rights law at Trinity College Dublin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf everything were to go smoothly and you don\u2019t have any other intervening events or interruptions to the procedure, you\u2019d have a hearing sometime in 2027, probably early enough in the year so that you could have a judgment by the end of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
A range of factors could drag the case into 2028 however, including demands by other countries to intervene.<\/p>\n
The ICJ does have a tool to address the mismatch between the tempo of its proceedings and the urgency of catastrophic situations like Gaza. In 2024, it issued three sets of \u201cprovisional measures\u201d, in the form of instructions to Israel, responding to South Africa\u2019s requests.<\/p>\n
In January last year, the ICJ ruled that the claim of genocide was \u201cplausible\u201d and acknowledged \u201cthe catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is at serious risk of deteriorating further before the court renders its final judgment\u201d.<\/p>\n
It ordered Israel to \u201ctake all measures within its power\u201d to stop acts of genocide, and incitement to genocide from being committed and take \u201cimmediate and effective measures\u201d to allow aid into Gaza.<\/p>\n
In March 2024 it added more measures demanding humanitarian assistance should be allowed to enter, and in May, it ordered the Israeli offensive on the southern city of Rafah to cease and the Rafah crossing from Egypt to be reopened to aid deliveries.<\/p>\n
Israel almost entirely ignored the provisional measures and rejected the genocide accusation as \u201coutrageous and false\u201d, and South Africa has sought no further measures, despite the periods of total blockade Israel imposed on Gaza this year. According to a source close to its legal team, the intense pressure from Washington has had an effect.<\/p>\n
In February, Donald Trump issued an executive order halting aid to South Africa, castigating it for its stand at the ICJ, made alleging, without evidence, that the country\u2019s white Afrikaners were \u201cvictims of unjust racial discrimination\u201d. The South African government has insisted it has no intention of dropping the Gaza case however.<\/p>\n
Quite apart from the ICJ\u2019s deliberately ponderous pace, is the very high standard of proof required to arrive at a genocide judgment. On the page, the 1948 Genocide Convention does not set a high bar, defining genocide as the intentional destruction \u201cin whole or in part\u201d a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.<\/p>\n
In its interpretation of the convention however, the ICJ has required \u201cfully conclusive\u201d evidence that an accused state had genocide intent in committing mass killings and there were no other feasible, competing motives, such as counter-insurgency or territorial acquisition. Under that standard, the court has yet to rule against any country for genocide.<\/p>\n
The current panel of judges have an opportunity to moderate that daunting standard in a genocide case which will precede Gaza \u2013 Myanmar\u2019s atrocities against the Rohingya people, which is expected to start hearings early next year.<\/p>\n
Even without a change on the ICJ benchmark, a growing number of legal scholars believe that in its actions in Gaza, Israel is crossing even that high bar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile it\u2019s really slow and frustrating, one of the benefits of [the ICJ\u2019s deliberate pace] is that when the court, almost inevitably I think at this point, finds that Israel has been committing genocide, we will be able to say that there is no doubting this conclusion,\u201d McIntyre said.<\/p>\n
Whatever the outcome, many experts in international humanitarian law argue that a fixation on a genocide verdict could be a dangerous distraction, delaying decisive action by the international community as it waits for an ICJ verdict while demonstrable crimes against humanity are allowed to continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem with this kind of fixation is it contains a kind of underlying suggestion that if it doesn\u2019t meet the legal definition of genocide, it\u2019s OK,\u201d Becker said. \u201cIt causes people to lose sight of the fact that if we\u2019re talking about genocide, we\u2019re already in a very grave situation to start with. It shouldn\u2019t actually require genocide for there to be an obligation to step in or to take action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While Palestinians in Gaza die in ever-increasing numbers from starvation each day and a growing number of legal scholars, aid officials and politicians have begun describing Israel\u2019s actions as genocide, a definitive ruling on the question by the world\u2019s top court will be a long time coming. Experts on the International Court of Justice (ICJ)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[5283,160,6129,1233,1129,5780,531,2282,6130],"class_list":{"0":"post-12506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-cautious","9":"tag-court","10":"tag-delaying","11":"tag-gaza","12":"tag-genocide","13":"tag-icj","14":"tag-international","15":"tag-justice","16":"tag-verdict"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}