The widespread claims that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that it is "plausible" that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza Strip are inaccurate, former ICJ President Joan Donoghue told the BBC.
“I’m glad I have a chance to address that because the court’s test for deciding whether to impose measures uses the idea of plausibility. But the test is the plausibility of the rights that are asserted by the applicant, in this case South Africa,” Donoghue, who was still the court's president when the interim verdict was issued, said on the HARDtalk program.
“The court decided that the Palestinians had a plausible right to be protected from genocide and that South Africa had the right to present that claim in the court,” she continued. “It then looked at the facts as well. But it did not decide—and this is something where I’m correcting what’s often said in the media—it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”
She noted that the ICJ interim ruling “did emphasize in the order that there was a risk of irreparable harm to the Palestinian right to be protected from genocide. But the shorthand that often appears, which is that there’s a plausible case of genocide, isn’t what the court decided.”
The ICJ issued an interim ruling on South Africa's attempt to charge Israel with genocide in late January. The ruling did not call for an immediate end to the war between Israel and Hamas which began when Hamas launched an unprovoked attack on southern Israel on October 7, massacring 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.
In its decision, the court stated, "At least some of South Africa's complaints appear to be capable of falling within the Genocide Convention."
The court also claimed that the situation in Gaza constitutes an urgent threat to the population of Gaza, including the lack of food, medical care, and heating in the wintertime, and that the situation would likely deteriorate further even before the final verdict is issued. It therefore deemed the situation "an urgent cause."
The court likewise noted Israel's attempts at "certain humanitarian measures, and that calls for intentional harm to civilians were a criminal offense and being investigated by Israeli law enforcement."
In the final verdict, the ICJ declared that Israel must, under the Genocide Convention, take all measures in its power to prevent the commission of forbidden acts, including causing death, causing injury, imposing dangerous conditions of life, and preventing births. It also specified that Israel is required to prevent its military in particular from any of these acts, and punish any calls for genocide or related forbidden acts.