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HOW TO READ THE ICJ DECISION AND END GENOCIDE, WAR AND SETTLER
COLONIALISM  
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Matt Meyer
January 29, 2024
Waging Nonviolence
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_ A better understanding of the legalese inherent to international
law mandates reveals the tools activists can use to organize more
strategically for Palestinian freedom. _

, Getty Images

 

On Jan. 26, the International Court of Justice, or ICJ, issued a
historic decision that some progressives applauded while others
decried it as not going far enough to demand a ceasefire in the
Israeli war on Gaza.

The decision was a partial ruling in a case taken against Israel by
the government of South Africa, an interesting note given that some
— myself included — have been suggesting for months that the best
path for peace and justice in the region will follow a pattern similar
to the one that brought an end to the political apartheid of the
racist South African regime of the 20th century.

In order to not lose sight of the ultimate goal — an end to the
genocide, war and settler colonialism in Palestine — a better
understanding of the ICJ decision is crucial. Here then, are answers
to four of the most common questions stemming from the legalese
inherent to international law mandates. As you’ll see, this better
understanding reveals the tools activists can use to organize more
strategically

1. BUT ICJ DIDN’T CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE?

Yes, that’s exactly what Netanyahu has said, and parroting this
point might well play into Israel and the United States’ hands in
trying to avoid the verdict the ICJ actually did commit to and had the
jurisdiction to render. The ICJ is and has never been a military
tribunal, a mediating force, or the word of the Almighty. Hopes that a
strong decision could quickly end the violence in Gaza have never been
based on a realistic assessment of what is possible. I wake up every
morning wishing that my own country wasn’t in such a mess, with two
elderly and less-than-ideal front-runner presidential candidates! But
I don’t cry out about that reality; I get to work doing what
strategically I am able to do to make things better.

The ICJ carefully ruled on the very limited legal procedures that were
laid out before them: whether or not the current Israeli military
actions in Gaza constituted a form of genocide – one of the most
extreme human rights violations any court or international legal body
can rule on. Israel argued that these claims were “baseless.”
Between the choices before them of “baseless” or “plausible,”
the court, in overwhelming majority, ruled that the South African
genocide allegations were in fact plausible and that all possible
measures must be taken by Israel to end and prevent any acts that
could reasonably result in continued genocide, including the allowance
of humanitarian aid.

South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, in her remarks at The
Hague following the decision
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“if you read the order, by implication, a ceasefire must happen.”
The only way they can reasonably comply with the ICJ ruling is through
a ceasefire. Militant Palestinian lawyer and activist Lamis Deek added
that a ceasefire is a “condition precedent” in the ruling. Deek, a
spokesperson for the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in
Palestine
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and convener of the Global Legal Alliance for Palestine added that the
historic verdict “profoundly reshapes the geopolitical and legal
topography…changing international and domestic approaches to
stopping the genocide.”

2. BUT WHAT IF ISRAELI DOESN’T COMPLY?

A sober assessment of the current war and humanitarian crisis has long
suggested that Israel, fully backed by the U.S. and other (mainly
European) countries, would refuse to abide by or follow any ruling
from the ICJ. Huwaida Arraf, Palestinian co-founder of the
International Solidarity Movement and former chair of the Free Gaza
Movement, noted weeks ago that “Israel is so accustomed to operating
with impunity, it may very well refuse to abide by any order of the
court, just like it has refused to abide by numerous UN Security
Council resolutions, which are also binding.”

The point has never been that an ICJ verdict will force an immediate
end to the violence, genocide or occupation. As Deek noted, “the
question now is how to deal with the anticipated U.S.-Israeli
obstruction of that decision.” Again, Arraf summarized it best
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verdict will not matter without the building of popular campaigns.
“Global civil society can help,” she wrote, “by continuing to
mobilize to pressure our countries to support South Africa. We can
also put pressure on our countries to take their own measures against
Israel if it refuses to comply [with court rulings].

As of the ICJ decision, continuing to supply Israel with weapons
amounts to complicity in supporting genocide — “the mother of all
crimes.” The ICJ decision is first and foremost an organizing tool
for Palestinian solidarity — one of the strongest tools of the past
70 years if we understand it and use it well.

“Words are not enough,” Arraf continues. “Palestine needs
action. UN resolutions without enforcement measures are useless… We
must continue our work in the streets…continue to demand sanctions;
demand Israel’s suspensions from international fora such as
Eurovision and international sporting arenas;…and use the principle
of universal jurisdiction to prosecute Israeli war criminals in
national courts, which is already being pursued.”

Like the building of the massive, international anti-apartheid
movement of the 1980s — largely built on boycott, divestment and
sanctions strategies in conjunction with South African anti-apartheid
resistance — if we are serious about solidarity with Palestine, we
will stop worrying about the technical machinations of the ICJ and
redouble our work to build grassroots movements in every local
community.

3. SO, ARE ICJ VERDICTS AND RELATED INTERNATIONAL LEGAL PROCEEDINGS
WORTHLESS?

They are neither worthless nor all-powerful; they are imperfect
mechanisms set up by even more imperfect governments in a very
imperfect world.

In 1966 and 1967, distinguished philosopher Bertrand Russell convened
the International War Crimes Tribunal
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with even less formal legal or UN support than the ICJ. Yet it helped
shift global public opinion against the “American war” and in
support of the Vietnamese resistance. In 1974, the United Nations
General Assembly excluded the apartheid regime
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of South Africa from its annual proceedings, recognizing instead both
the African National Congress and the Pan African Congress as the
official representatives of the South African people. Despite this
defiant act from the UN’s highest body, formal political apartheid
did not end for another two decades, but the UN decision greatly
strengthened the global movements as well as the clandestine and
above-ground organizing within South Africa, which made the 1994
election of Mandela inevitable.

In 1989, a special session of the Permanent Peoples Tribunal convened
in Barcelona to hear the case of Puerto Rico, with a focus on the
Puerto Rican political prisoners and prisoners of war held in U.S.
jails. Most progressives in the U.S. and many in Puerto Rico itself
had never heard of POW status applied in reference to the U.S.-Puerto
Rican colonial dispute. By 1999, most of the Puerto Rican political
prisoners were freed, and today all are free! The key to these
victories was the ways in which the tribunal verdicts were actively
and intensively used as organizing tools by the people of Puerto Rico
and their international allies.

In 2021, the U.S.-based and Black liberation movement-led Spirit of
Mandela coalition initiated an International Tribunal
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on U.S. human rights violations against Black, Brown and Indigenous
peoples, with the U.S. ultimately being found guilty of genocide on
five counts of international law by an panel of independent jurists.
The point, again, was not primarily to get formal UN support but to
have a grouping of globally respected human rights experts affirm the
conditions that BIPOC people in the U.S. are largely aware of. The
verdict, like the ICJ verdict on South Africa’s case against Israel,
is a tool. In the case of the Spirit of Mandela coalition, that tool
helped to build a massive, bottom-up, Peoples Senate of
disenfranchised, oppressed, and colonized voices from throughout the
U.S. empire.

If the people of the world do nothing but read, or only affirm (or
even decry) the ICJ decision, it could end up being close to
worthless. On the other hand, it lays the seeds of ending not just
genocide but Israeli settler colonialism, of freeing Palestinian
political prisoners, and of creating a more lasting peace in the
region if pressure is increased to end the Zionist project of unending
occupation and racism.

4. SO, IS THERE NO REASON FOR HOPE?

Israeli teenager Tal Mitnick
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quoted in the _Jerusalem Post_, has proclaimed: “I refuse to fight a
war of revenge.” The young pacifist continued: “I refuse to
believe that more violence will bring security… In a world full of
corrupt interests in which we live, violence and war are another way
to increase support for the government and silence criticism.”
Mitnick is the first Israeli resister to be jailed specifically for
refusing to fight in the current Gaza campaign, and he was recently
re-arrested (as he will be so long as he continues to resist). But
Mitnick remains undeterred
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and he is not alone
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There is great reason for hope in the new generation of anti-Zionist
Israeli Jews who, in growing numbers despite repression and an ocean
of nationalistic, militaristic Israeli propaganda, continue to
recognize the inevitability of Palestinian freedom. Throughout the
diaspora, people of Jewish descent in record numbers are risking
arrest, saying “not in our name” to Israeli apartheid, affirming
that “never again” means NEVER, not just the Holocaust: Never
again for anyone.

There is reason for hope in continuing Palestinian resistance, which
takes many forms including ones not found in screaming headlines.
There is widespread understanding and agreement that the future
requires a one-state solution that is both secular and inclusive —
though with the rights of Palestinian people to return to their land
enshrined in any justice-based resolution of conflict. Throughout the
Arab world, people are rising up in support of their Palestinian
cousins in record numbers, despite whatever hesitancies or reactionary
positions their national governments might have.

And there is now reason for hope that a greater proportion of the
world will take notice and feel inspired, or morally obligated, or
politically pressured into doing the right thing, especially in light
of what UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur and distinguished
Princeton Law Professor Emeritus Richard Falk calls the “greatest
moment in the history of the [World Court]
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I have hope in the leading voices and especially the vital work of the
three women quoted in this article, two of them Palestinian. These
hopes, however, will be short-lived if they are not accompanied by
stronger-than-ever popular movements that bring together growing
numbers of the not-yet-committed to join the call. The only true
Pro-Semitic Peace must derive from the treatment of the Holy Land as
if it were a holy place for Muslims, Jews, Christians and all others.

This story was produced by IPRA Peace Search
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Matt Meyer is author of numerous books on resistance and social change
chiefly published by PM Press and Africa World Press. He is the
Secretary General of the International Peace Research Association, a
long-time leader of both the War Resisters League and Fellowship of
Reconciliation, the Senior Research Scholar of the Resistance Studies
Initiative, and an advisory board member of Waging Nonviolence.

* Israel; Palestine; United States; United Nations;
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