The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel take immediate measures to ensure it is not committing genocide in the Gaza Strip and aid an increase humanitarian assistance for Palestinians trapped there, but did not grant a request by South Africa to order a cease-fire on the ground.
Israel must take "immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians," ICJ President Joan Donoghue said as she read out the court's preliminary ruling on January 26.
"The court is acutely aware of the extent of the human tragedy that is unfolding in the region and is deeply concerned about the continuing loss of life and human suffering,” she added.
South Africa had asked the court for provisional measures, including a cease-fire, saying it was “a matter of extreme urgency.”
Israel had denied the accusation it is committing genocide in Gaza, at one point during the evidentiary hearings saying that drawing similarities with Russia's war in Ukraine was "absurd."
The court ordered Israel to report within one month on the measures it has taken to uphold the ruling.
It also said it was "gravely concerned" about the fate of the hostages taken by Hamas back into Gaza after its attack, and called on the extremists and other armed groups to immediately release those being held without conditions.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the accusation that his country was committing genocide, calling it "outrageous."
"Israel's commitment to international law is unwavering. Equally unwavering is our sacred commitment to continue to defend our country and defend our people," Netanyahu said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, after the ruling.
As part of its case seeking the court to order a provisional halt to the hostilities, touched off by a Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 that killed some 1,200 civilians in Israel, South Africa had pointed to a March 2022 ruling it made calling on Russia to halt its military operations against Ukraine.
The court did not address that point in its ruling, which addressed only the request for emergency measures. A decision on the broader allegations of genocide, legal experts say, could take years.
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What Now After ICJ Ruling On Israel-Gaza?
International legal expert Gurgen Petrossian said the ruling allows Israel to continue its military operation in Gaza, and that the comparison to Russia and Ukraine appears to have failed to gain traction with the court.
“If we make the comparison with [the] Ukraine against Russia order on the genocide convention, where we have two states and one country which started the war against another state, under these circumstances we can consider a cease-fire as a legitimate form of a preliminary measure.," he told RFE/RL in an interview.
“In the case of Israel, which is actually conducting or fighting a nonstate actor, Hamas, in this particular case…it still may continue its operations…in order to rescue the hostages.”
South Africa, which accused Israel of committing "systematic" acts of genocide in the conflict, asked the court to hand down an emergency ruling to protect Palestinians in Gaza from further harm by Israel's war against Hamas. The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza says more than 26,000 Palestinians have been killed in the campaign, the majority of whom were women and children.
"Today marks a decisive victory for the international rule of law and a significant milestone in the search for justice for the Palestinian people," South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation said in a statement.
"South Africa sincerely hopes that Israel will not act to frustrate the application of this Order, as it has publicly threatened to do, but that it will instead act to comply with it fully, as it is bound to do."
Oona Hathaway, a law professor at Yale University, said that, while the ruling fell short of imposing a cease-fire, the court "got as close to doing so as it was ever reasonable to expect it would."
"This is pretty much everything South Africa could have hoped for,” she added.
Ryan Goodman and Siven Watt of Just Security said that the ruling on January 26 was easier for South Africa to achieve than a final ruling in the case of whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
"Friday’s [January 26] opinion was a far easier hurdle for South Africa to clear – based on a very low standard of proof – compared to the standard of proof that will be required were the Court to reach the merits phase. This is true of any ICJ case. It is especially true of a case about genocide, for which the Court has imposed the highest standard of proof at the final merits stage," they wrote in reaction to the decision.
South Africa's heading up of the case has put a spotlight on its long-standing support of Palestinian rights, with even Nelson Mandela once saying that his country's freedom would be "incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians."
Decisions by the ICJ cannot be appealed, but the court itself has no means to enforce its rulings.
Analysts have previously noted that the ICJ's order for Russia to halt its military operations had no effect.