The international court of justice on Friday ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide by its troops in Gaza, and to allow more aid into the besieged territory. The court, which is the UN’s highest judicial body, stopped short of calling for an immediate ceasefire. But it was a victory for the Palestinians, and for the global south in general, in that Israel is being held accountable for its military actions for the first time, and by one of the world’s most important courts.
By allowing the case brought by South Africa to go forward and calling on Israel to comply with the genocide convention – and to report back to the court within a month – the ruling raises the stakes on Israel’s western backers to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to rein in its devastating invasion and bombardment of Gaza. The ruling is embarrassing to Joe Biden and his top aides, especially the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who described South Africa’s case as “meritless” a few weeks ago.
While it could take years for the court to rule on whether Israel has committed genocide, the interim measures are intended to prevent conditions in Gaza from getting worse while the case makes its way through the tribunal’s process. The US, Britain and other western powers that have backed Israel unconditionally since it launched its assault on Gaza, after Hamas’s 7 October attacks, will presumably want to avoid being implicated in supporting a genocide – and that is incentive for these world powers to finally push for a ceasefire.
The Biden administration is particularly vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy if it decides to ignore the court’s findings, which are binding on its member states. But the court does not have an enforcement mechanism, aside from referring matters to the UN security council, where Washington has already used its veto power multiple times to shield Israel from demands for a ceasefire. Over the past few years, the US and Britain have urged adversaries, especially Russia and Myanmar, to abide by the international court’s rulings.
In November, the US president issued a statement supporting the candidacy of a US law professor, Sarah Cleveland, to join the international court, saying it “remains one of humanity’s most critical institutions to advance peace around the world”. With such a strong endorsement, the US would look duplicitous if it continues to insist that South Africa’s case is baseless, or that the court’s nearly unanimous ruling on Friday somehow should not apply to Israel.
With their unwavering support of Israel, Biden and Blinken also failed to live up to a highly touted promise, made a month after their administration took office in 2021, to put human rights at the center of US foreign policy. The administration said it is “committed to a world in which human rights are protected, their defenders are celebrated, and those who commit human rights abuses are held accountable”.
That pledge faltered even before the Gaza war, when Biden continued the decades-long US policy of providing military aid and diplomatic support to repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, while ignoring their human rights violations and suppression of dissent.
Like previous US presidents, including George W Bush and Barack Obama, who waged or supported foreign wars while dispensing lofty rhetoric about respect for human rights and democracy, Biden’s façade fell apart thanks to his support of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. Israel’s war has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians – a majority of them women and children.
According to Oxfam, the daily death toll, averaging 250 per day, has surpassed any other major conflict in the 21st century. The invasion has also unleashed mass hunger and displaced nearly 85% of Gaza’s population, about 1.9 million people. Despite the death toll and humanitarian crisis, the US and other western powers have yet to meaningfully pressure Israel to end its bombardment and accept a ceasefire.
In fact, the Biden administration fell into wishful thinking as it faced the prospect of the Gaza conflict spreading into a wider regional war that would draw in Iran and its allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and various Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.
Since the Gaza war started, Hezbollah and Israeli forces have engaged in almost daily exchanges of fire across the Israel-Lebanon border, while the Houthi militia has attacked shipping vessels in the Red Sea – prompting the US and UK to attack dozens of Houthi targets in Yemen over the past two weeks. But even at the risk of an expanding conflict that his administration insists it wants to avoid, Biden has refused to take the most straightforward path to de-escalation across the region: forcing Netanyahu to accept a truce in Gaza.
Biden has significant leverage over the Israeli government. After the 7 October attacks, the US administration requested more than $14bn in funding from Congress for weapons and other military aid to Israel. But instead of using that leverage to end the war, Biden’s administration has gone out of its way to shield US weapons sales and shipments to Israel from public scrutiny and congressional approval.
In November, Biden removed restrictions on Israel’s ability to access a weapons stockpile that the Pentagon has kept in Israel since the 1980s. Then in December, the state department twice invoked emergency provisions that allowed it to send tens of thousands of artillery shells and other munitions to Israel without review by Congress.
Biden’s effort to protect Israel from criticism over heavy civilian casualties and the ways it has conducted its war in Gaza exposed the US not only to international condemnation and charges of hypocrisy, but to potential complicity in war crimes. In December, CNN reported that a US intelligence assessment found that almost half of the bombs that Israel had dropped on Gaza since 7 October were “dumb bombs”, or unguided munitions, which have much higher potential of killing civilians, especially in a densely populated area like Gaza. (Israel has “smart bombs”, but they’re more expensive and harder to secure, so the Israeli military seemed to be holding them back and using the cheaper munitions.)
In arguing their case at the international court, South Africa’s lawyers pointed to Israel’s use of “dumb bombs” and 2,000-pound bunker-buster munitions, which cause huge damage in dense areas, as examples of Israel’s large-scale killing and maiming of civilians. Among the thousands of bombs it rushed to Israel since October, the US has sent at least 100 bunker busters – and Israel has already dropped hundreds of these bombs on Gaza.
Over the past few days – perhaps anticipating the international court’s decision and potential public relations damage – the Biden administration leaked plans to send its CIA director, William Burns, to Europe to meet with Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials. Burns is hoping to revive indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza and a potential ceasefire. There are still many obstacles, especially since Israel has reportedly proposed a 60-day pause in fighting, while Hamas is insisting on a permanent ceasefire and the release of nearly all Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the remaining hostages.
Even though the international court did not grant South Africa’s request for an immediate ceasefire, its ruling could force the hand of the Biden administration and Israel’s other western supporters to finally end the bloodshed in Gaza.
Mohamad Bazzi is the director of the Hagop Kevorkian center for near eastern studies and a journalism professor at New York University
