I must preface this article with the following caveat: Given the magnitude of the cruel circumstances, my reading of the much-anticipated preliminary ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in response to South Africa’s brief accusing Israel of genocide is of little importance. , if applicable, importance.
Since the tribunal issued its findings, I have chosen instead to consider the reactions of the Palestinian diaspora and their surviving brothers and sisters in what remains of Gaza, the occupied West Bank and beyond.
Their voices matter. Not mine.
Of course, more than 26,000 Palestinians – and counting – no longer have a voice. They are dead. Wiped out by a fanatical Israeli cabinet that killed hundreds more Palestinians while a gallery of white Western columnists like me analyze the meaning and merits of the “provisional” measures the Court has just announced.
We must never forget this glaring and instructive fact.
Two camps emerged.
The former hailed the court’s decision as a watershed. Israel has finally been held accountable after decades of evasion for the litany of outrages it has committed against generation after generation of Palestinians.
The other enduring and overarching significance of the Court’s decrees is that the West’s tolerated and supported license to displace, maim and kill Palestinians without consequences is over.
Almost unanimously, the tribunal was satisfied that South Africa had presented a plausible case demonstrating that Israel had displayed the intention to commit genocide.
Accordingly, the court is required by international law to conduct a full hearing and ultimately render a verdict on the fundamental question: Is Israel guilty of the crime of genocide in Gaza?
Almost unanimously, the court effectively rejected the establishment media’s notion that the unfolding calamity in Gaza was a “war” between adversaries; but rather it 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 take “immediate” action to end the horrors it has unleashed with such unremitting ferocity over the past four months.
To this end, the court almost unanimously asked Israel to submit a report to South Africa within a month for review.
Israel is obliged to detail how, when and where it took obligatory measures not only to prevent genocide, but also incitement to genocide and to allow humanitarian aid to reach the hungry and destitute souls living in the devastated enclave.
The implicit meaning of the court order was that Israel must adopt a ceasefire.
As South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor explained to journalists outside The Hague: “I think to enforce the order there would have to be a ceasefire. Without it, the order doesn’t really work.
The irony is as unavoidable as it is delicious.
A court has ordered an apartheid regime to respond to a country that timely and patiently freed itself from another apartheid regime.
The Court’s judgment is particularly satisfying because it represents a strong and damning rebuttal to the now-discredited assertion by regular diplomats in regular capitals that South Africa’s persuasive petition was “meritless” and “counterproductive.” “.
It must be recognized that the court dealt a categorical and fatal blow to this empty 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 written today,” writes Palestinian writer and editor Mouin Rabbani. wrote on X. “Israel today is associated with the crime of genocide primarily as a perpetrator and not as a victim. Israel’s policy towards the Palestinian people will now be judged on its own merits rather than the shadow of European history.”
In this broader context, Rabbani argues that the understandable chagrin that the judges are not explicitly calling for a “ceasefire” is moot since Israel has signaled – publicly and repeatedly – that it will continue its “ceasefire.” murderous rage” regardless of the court’s decisions.
Yet there is a legion of disappointed Palestinians interviewed by Tel Aviv Tribune and the few other news outlets permanently present in Gaza.
They described the Court’s refusal to require a ceasefire and end the latest Israeli invasion as a predictable “failure” that only fueled their lingering distrust of the “international community” and the so-called “global justice system”.
“Even though I don’t trust the international community, I had a small glimmer of hope that the court would rule on a ceasefire in Gaza,” Ahmed al-Naffar, 54, told the court. Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city center. Deir el-Balah in Gaza, 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) the opportunity to continue exterminating us while providing us with leftover food, medicine and basic necessities that we need. »
Widespread disappointment is compounded by the blatant and shocking hypocrisy of the ICJ.
Writing from occupied East Jerusalem, Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, job this direct tweet about X: “A lot of people make excuses. The ICJ can and has always called for a ceasefire. In 2022, he demanded that “Russia immediately suspend the military operation it has started (in Ukraine)”
I oscillate between these two disparate perspectives.
The reward that Israel may or may not receive in The Hague in a few months or years will be deserved and long overdue.
But the imperative of the moment; the imperative to end the suffering and killing of Palestinians is the most urgent necessity.
The optimist in me hopes that the ICJ’s decision will somehow hasten the end – for good – of the killing spree and the speedy return of Israelis detained 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 massacre of innocents will continue. Palestinian children, the elderly and the infirm will succumb to hunger and disease as their families huddle in a sea of flimsy, rain-soaked tents while Israel turns all of Gaza into dust and memory .
And, despite the ICJ’s injunctions, much of the world will allow Israel’s wanton siege and carnage of Gaza today and tomorrow, as it did yesterday.
Yet the flippant few who dismiss the ICJ’s scathing rebuff of Israel as symbolic or irrelevant should take careful note of how Tel Aviv and Washington have received the Court’s decision.
For its part, Israel has trotted out the old canard that the ICJ is a hive of “anti-Semitic prejudice.”
What an unserious response to a serious indictment.
Meanwhile, in a calculated and cynical attempt to distract from the remarkable proceedings in The Hague, the White House announced the suspension of its relatively paltry aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Refugees in Palestine in the Near East (UNRWA), in light of Israeli allegations that some of the organization’s personnel were involved in the October 7 attacks.
Convenient timing, right?
South Africa’s bold gamble at the ICJ could already be bearing fruit with the announcement that a deal in principle is close to freeing Israeli captives in exchange for a temporary ceasefire.
So, give a deep and well-deserved bow, South Africa.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Tel Aviv Tribune.