Is the ICJ Verdict A License to Continue the Gaza Genocide?

By: Kayhan Int’l

The interim verdict of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) though welcomed by countries and people around the world as optimistic for measures underway to finally confirm Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, stopped short of calling for the end of the three-and-a-half month carnage in Gaza, and as is clear by its wordings it gives the Zionist entity the license to continue the slaughter of the civilians in what could be called “a controlled way” in order to avoid the genocidal label.

This means usurper Israel’s mere handful but very influential anti-Palestinian regimes led by the US and the UK did not sit idle ever since South Africa filed the historic case to put the racist/terrorist Zionist entity in the criminal dock for the first time.

Behind the scenes, these regimes which are openly supplying the most lethal weapons to the non-Semitic East European occupiers of Palestine for the holocaust have used every leverage to pressure the judges in Hague to issue a vague-worded verdict that does not end either the total destruction of Gaza or the decimation of its population, while the supposed probing of the charges of genocide drags on for months if not years.

This is fully evident by the rapidly rising toll of the dead and the injured as well as the blowing up of entire neighbourhoods, including hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and even the so-called UN safe centres, after Friday’s ICJ ruling.

It means the Palestinians whose killings are no longer restricted to Gaza and have spread to the West Bank of Jordan River, should be fooled yet again by dubious diplomacy at a time when their only true supporters in Lebanon, in Yemen, and in Iraq, are being called terrorists and their defensive military measures for peace in Palestine, are being depicted as attempts to expand the theatre of war, while the US and the UK have every right to violate the sovereignty of regional countries to bomb these heroic peoples.

Here is what Joan Donoghue, the president of the UN court at Hague said in announcing the ICJ interim verdict:

“The court is aware of the current tragedy in Gaza and condemns the continuous killings there. Israel must take the necessary measures to prevent the killing of a group of people or serious harm to them. Israel must take all necessary measures to prevent mass killings and genocide in Gaza and immediately take measures to prevent destruction in Gaza and submit a report to the court about all temporary measures within one month. Some of Israel’s actions raised in South Africa’s lawsuit are considered to be violations of the United Nations Convention on the Prohibition of Genocide, and we are taking urgent measures regarding Israel’s case of genocide in Gaza. Israel must ensure the immediate provision of necessary assistance to the people of Gaza. All parties involved in Gaza should adhere to international laws and release the hostages immediately and unconditionally.”

A deliberately doctored declaration that lets the illegal Zionist entity off the hook and implicitly asks it to continue the massacre, while trying to blame the innocent victims of violation of international law and hostage-taking, when the fact of the matter is that those Israeli civilians in Gaza were escorted to the safety of the tunnels by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad liberation movements in order to prevent their killing by the Israeli soldiers.