Here is a pdf of the ICJ’s Order of 26 January 2024.
For convenience, I will list the provisional orders below edited for ease of readability:
(1) The State of Israel shall, in accordance with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in relation to Palestinians in Gaza, take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular:
- (a) killing members of the group;
- (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- (c ) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and
- (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(2) The State of Israel shall ensure with immediate effect that its military does not commit any acts described in point 1 above;
(3)The State of Israel shall take all measures within its power to prevent and punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip;
(4) The State of Israel shall take immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in the Gaza Strip;
(5) The State of Israel shall take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide against members of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip;
(6) The State of Israel shall submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to give effect to this Order within one month as from the date of this Order.
This is good to keep in mind in general although I’m not sure how it’s relevant here. In fact, there are the definitional points from Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide quoted by the order in the body of my post. The point of this ruling by the International Court of Justice is that there is a credible case for genocide here according to the definition of Genocide which Israel explicitly agreed to.
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Yes, I could intuit your opinion on the matter. This is not a matter of public opinion, it is a matter of law.
It really is a matter of opinion since International Law isn’t really law… they’re more like guidelines.
There’s no enforcement mechanism. A whole bunch of countries never bothered to sign or ratify it. The US specifically is not a party to the statue that created the International Criminal Court and has plans to attack it and extract people if their citizens ever get caught up in it’s processes.
There’s no doubt that the ICJ has well-known limits in the enforcement of its decision, and countries have ignored ICJ rulings in the past (notably the US, as you mentioned). This to me is not a failing of the idea of international law regarding the prevention of genocide but a failing of nations who would rather exist in a world absent of law since they are able to use violence to inflict their will on others. The problem as I see it with this line of thinking is that abandoning the pretense of international law rather than attempting to bolster it as an international community makes all people in the world vulnerable. The status of nations who violate ICJ orders do not exist in a permanent state of their relative power and could suffer the consequences of a lack of international law when situations change and once-invulnerable bodies become vulnerable. I believe in the basis of the legal prevention of genocide by the international community.
This being so, I believe that there are other consequences for nations found plausibly guilty of heinous crimes in an official international court of law pertaining to laws partially written by the state of Israel itself. Israel depends a great deal on its international reputation. A reading of its history of strange bedfellows reveals this desperation. Being plausibly guilty of genocide is not good for Israel’s relationships or economy. If Israel is concerned about outside threats, scuttling itself in the name of persecuting Palestinians is not a reasonable path. Only the far-right sensibility that Palestinians are inherently unworthy of sharing a country with European colonists keeps Israel from ending apartheid and granting Palestinians full rights as citizens of a unified state.