Who is popular today?

IN RULING on Friday that Israel must take all steps within its power to prevent the genocide of the people of Palestine, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has put the ball squarely in Israel’s court.
While this may not necessarily result in an immediate shift on the ground, it nonetheless heaps even more pressure on military officials to conform with the 1948 Genocide Convention as Israel exercises its right to defend itself. It also serves as a milestone for international humanitarian law.
In December, South Africa filed a case against Israel under the same convention that was conceived as a response to the Holocaust, calling on the court to order a range of temporary measures, including an immediate ceasefire. If the invocation of the 1948 treaty was of great symbolism, so too was South Africa’s involvement in this matter.
Not only did South Africa’s own history of colonialism and apartheid lend its petition a particular weight, but the fact that it is thought to be the cradle of humankind, with the very first people believed to have existed there 100,000 years ago, gave its advocacy a unique complexion.
The ICJ, however, did not go as far as South Africa would have liked, declining to call for a ceasefire but instead, in an interim judgement, calling on Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of” the law. This includes preventing the killing and harming of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, welcomed the ruling, noting the court did not call for a ceasefire.
“The charge of genocide levelled against Israel is not only false, it’s outrageous, and decent people everywhere should reject it,” he continued to say.
But also welcoming the ruling was South Africa’s foreign affairs ministry, calling it “a decisive victory for the international rule of law and a significant milestone in the search for justice for the Palestinian people.” Riyad al-Maliki, Palestine’s foreign affairs minister, said it was a ruling “in favour of humanity and international law.”
While the ICJ, based in The Hague, is the principal judicial organ of the UN, the path to the enforcement of its rulings is not often clear. Had it called for a ceasefire, it was unclear how that could have been enforced. One of the judges on the panel on Friday was from the US, a country often at odds with the ICJ.
Since the horrific events of October 7, in which Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israeli people, almost 26,000 people from Gaza have been killed.
The ICJ’s ruling might not change those senseless numbers, but it goes some way in restoring badly damaged faith in a rules-based international order.
The post Hague puts ball in Israel’s court appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.