Today, the International Court of Justice will either indicate that provisional measures are required to protect Gaza from genocide or the plausible risk of genocide - or they will not.
In the short term, this is meaningless. Israel’s campaign in Gaza will not be stopped by an order from the ICJ. Netanyahu has explicitly stated “The Hague will not stop us.” Nonetheless, this decision is important.
Now we don’t actually know how the ICJ will rule. There’s precedent to consider and most experts believe that there will be some sort of compromise ruling that does impose some provisional measures but does nor call for a ceasefire. This would be monumental and actually important.
Why? Israel will ignore the order, and the US will veto any attempt to enforce the order through the Security Council. Well, true. But still important.
“Never Again” is not merely a slogan. This is the core principle of the Genocide Convention. Preventing genocide is the main point - and any provisional measures indicated by the ICJ would be a statement that they see the risk of genocide as being plausible. That alone is enough to trigger all sorts of things.
The Leahy Laws for example, prohibit the US from providing aid that might go to military units “credibly accused of gross human rights violations”. If the US followed its own laws, an ICJ indication would put an end to Israel’s resupply of bombs and guns.
To be clear, it’s already obvious that the Biden Administration is in violation of the Leahy Laws. The trigger is merely a credible allegation of gross human rights violations. Biden is just playing cute by saying there are no credible claims - because they aren’t assessing it and just ignoring the possibility. An ICJ finding means that for Biden to continue his act of willful ignorance - he does so by completely discrediting international law. The US has already lost a lot of moral authority since this began - so pretending that the ICJ (currently headed by an American btw) is delusional and antisemitic or whatever is going to be a pretty heavy price.
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