'Really cautious': why the ICJ is delaying a Gaza genocide verdict

While Palestinians starve and global opinion hardens, judgment from international court may not come until 2027 – or later

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/jul/27/why-the-icj-is-delaying-a-gaza-genocide-verdict

https://archive.ph/emIFI


Israel has almost entirely ignored the ICJ’s provisional measures and rejected the genocide accusation as ‘outrageous and false’. Photograph: Abdel Kareem Hana/AP

While Palestinians in Gaza die in ever-increasing numbers from starvation each day and a growing number of legal scholars, aid officials and politicians have begun describing Israel’s actions as genocide, a definitive ruling on the question by the world’s top court will be a long time coming. Experts on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) said a judgment on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza is unlikely before the end of 2027 at the earliest, amid warnings that the international community should not use the court’s glacial proceedings as an excuse to put off action to stop the killing.

Israel was originally due to present its rebuttal to the genocide charge brought by South Africa on Monday, but the court has granted its lawyers a six-month extension. The panel of 17 judges accepted Israel’s argument that it needed more than the nine months allotted to prepare its case, because they claimed “evidentiary issues” in South Africa’s presentation meant “the scope of the case remained unclear”. The South African legal team countered that none of the arguments given by Israeli lawyers were a legitimate reason for delay, and dragging out the case was unjustifiable in view of the humanitarian emergency in Gaza. But the court sided with Israel, which now has until next January to present its case.

“I think [the ICJ is] being really cautious here because of the political climate,” said Juliette McIntyre, a senior lecturer in law at the University of South Australia. “They don’t want to be accused of just running roughshod over Israel’s procedural rights and finding that it’s committed genocide without fully giving them an opportunity to respond.” Since its founding in 1945, the ICJ has always favoured circumspection over speed in its role as ultimate arbitrator between nations. “The ICJ is known for its slow deliberation. It is 80 years old and it wants to work in a certain way,” said Iva Vukušić, assistant professor in international history at Utrecht University.

After Israel presents its defence next January, each side would typically be given time to put together a further round of arguments to counter each other’s points and new developments. “The second round is usually around six months each, so that’s another year, and then that brings us to January 2027,” said Michael Becker, who served as a legal officer at the ICJ from 2010 to 2014, and who is now assistant professor of international human rights law at Trinity College Dublin. “If everything were to go smoothly and you don’t have any other intervening events or interruptions to the procedure, you’d have a hearing sometime in 2027, probably early enough in the year so that you could have a judgment by the end of the year.”

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