After ICJ judgement, global politics of life and death hang in the balance

World outrage at Israel’s brutal destruction of Gaza has been vindicated by this week's ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague.

The ICJ directed Israel to adhere to its obligations under the Genocide Convention. In doing so, the court implied that Israel’s conduct could be in violation of some of the provisions of the convention. International pressure from citizens, governments and human rights groups is now on Israel to comply with the directives of the ICJ by allowing for urgent humanitarian intervention to end the starvation of millions in Gaza and to prevent unprecedented catastrophic conditions.

The ICJ ruled that South Africa’s case for emergency intervention in the death, destruction and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza enjoyed merit and its complaint as a member state was justified. This finding clearly came as a blow to Israel’s main military and political sponsor, the United States, who three weeks ago insultingly deemed South Africa’s complaint to the ICJ "meritless." The United Kingdom also called it "nonsense."

Demonstrable arrogance by Western nations who justified and weaponised Israel’s actions are now tepidly trying to downplay the court’s orders to Israel. If anything, the hypocrisy of the West has reduced the rules-based global order to tatters.

Calls by the punditocracy to have the US shore up its international posture as a superpower and remain a keeper of the global order are not only late, but also increasingly ring hollow, as Washington promptly becomes tone-deaf and selectively champions human rights causes.

Claims that the West led by the US occasionally breaks the rules-based global order to get a quick result are palpably false. The US in the past five decades alone has consistently upended the global order in a litany of violations, from the Vietnam War to the multiple Gulf Wars and invasions in Latin America.

They all disprove the claim that the US is a force for good. It's a fool's errand to parrot the West's superior moral status when China and India are rapidly steaming ahead in multiple spheres.

In the moral sphere, struggling economies and imperfect polities like the Gambia, Brazil and South Africa joined by large numbers of people in the global South are becoming the torchbearers of human values and equality. It is a rare global moment of fearless speech in concerted protests and activism.

In doing so, brave and fearless South Africa elicits the admiration, one can say without exaggeration, of billions of fellow human beings. Over the past three months, the world has seen a soul-destroying spectacle of "biopower" –a politics of life and death - in the most horrific ways.

Millions viewed the spectacle of death and destruction in Gaza on their handheld devices via social media. In macabre fashion, human bodies were sentenced to death by the technology of Israel’s US-provided missiles of "precision-bombing," preceded by human rights-friendly pamphlets warning trapped people in Gaza to vacate their homes.

There is a curious lesson in all this. Modern human societies have become wedged in political systems of their own making with lethal technologies and mentalities associated with their choices.

After the genocide of the Jews in Europe, and then the dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, and now in 2023-24 the equivalent of two Hiroshimas in Gaza in terms of the amount of armament dropped, the same political dramas of decades ago play out.

Something is terribly wrong in our political thinking in the modern world. Political choices made in the past by colonial powers whose effects continue into the present in Israel/Palestine have now put the very existence of millions of human beings in peril.

In other words, to make a political choice today of either resistance or submission, is in both cases to make a choice between life and death. It was different millennia ago.

For Aristotle, a human being was a rational animal but with the capacity to make political choices, choices that could lead to improvement.

The ICJ now requires Israel to comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention (Article II) to prevent the killing, destruction, and elimination of a "group," a key factor in the definition of genocide.

But it also insisted that Israel must not create conditions that prevent the birth of children as thousands of women, babies and children perish under bombs even in "safe areas" in Gaza. As the occupying power, Israel was instructed to not create conditions that are inimical to life.

Clearly, the highest court in the world is wary of possible genocide when it invokes such details in its order. The ICJ now supervises the conduct of the most fearsome global political system, the nation-state, that was lethally perfected in the twentieth century, but now it must constantly police its boundaries of life and death as the guardian of the Genocide Convention.

The United Nations Court requires all member states to adhere to its rulings. The court ruled by issuing "provisional measures," meaning that Israel must immediately comply with its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Israel must take all measures to prevent the commission of acts within the scope of Article II, the Order stated 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."

Although the court did not grant South Africa’s request for an immediate ceasefire, it is hard to conceive how Israel can comply with the demands of the court without drastically curtailing its wanton military activities in Gaza.

Its regular aerial bombardments have exacted 247 Palestinian deaths a day, now totalling over 26,000 dead with an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 dead under the rubble. Fifteen of the 17 judges of the court complied with a request by South Africa to consider the "plausibility of rights," which is legal speak for the protection of rights in terms of the widespread destruction in Gaza.

In other words, the court was satisfied with the provisional evidence South Africa presented on behalf of the victims of Gaza, without a full-scale investigation at this point, cautioning or signalling its concern that possible violations of the Genocide Convention might surface. It required further evidence and representations by the parties to adjudicate this charge further.

The fact that 15 international judges could agree that the scale of the catastrophe sufficiently made them engage with the provisions of Article II of the Genocide Convention means that Israel is in significant legal and moral trouble.

The provisional directive of the court confirms the common-sense global opinion that the death and destruction Israel inflicted for more than three months had all the hallmarks of genocidal intent and only a factual examination of the evidence can conclusively ensure the most serious allegations stick.

The court also directed Israel not to allow its military to violate the provisions of Article II. Additionally, it instructed Israel to prevent its public officials from inciting people to commit genocide in Gaza, and to "punish" those who do so.

This indicates that the court did not accept Israel’s response that genocidal utterances by its leaders were made in the heat of the moment, but that their speeches were earnest. The State of Israel must immediately take effective measures to provide basic and needed humanitarian services to the starving people of Gaza.

Israel must also preserve evidence related to the allegations, as required by the Convention on Genocide and should within one month submit a report that it had given effect to the order that "indicates provisional measures."

Even though it is not part of the order, the court did note that it is gravely concerned about the fate of the remaining Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas and other armed groups and called for their immediate release.

The greatest irony the world now beholds is that Israel, a country that justified its existence after the genocide of Jews in Europe, now stands accused of subjecting an indigenous people, the Palestinians, to genocidal destruction. Its leaders protest in disbelief, but the world and impartial observers see it differently.

What made this very modest, yet significant, moral victory in the Hague possible is the courage and fearless action on the part of one nation, South Africa, backed by an outraged global people’s movement. Notwithstanding the backlash South Africa is receiving from Western nations, its courage might be a small step in rectifying the global disorder.

A rules-based order means that every country must be responsible in implementing the rules. Henceforth, the rest of the world will be encouraged that human rights is not a moral football that is cynically touted from time to time by powerful nations. Rather, all people and their representatives are the keepers of human rights.