Advisory opinions will not stop genocide

Legal recourse becomes absurd when the need is to stop genocide as a matter of great urgency. In December 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice about Israel’s obligations in Gaza to ensure delivery of humanitarian aid “essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population as well as of basic services and humanitarian and development assistance, for the benefit of the Palestinian civilian population, and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.”

It is now April 2025; more Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s genocide in Gaza; and humanitarian aid has been completely blocked by the occupation state since the beginning of March, with only heavily-restricted supplies being allowed in before then. Two weeks ago, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz reiterated Israel’s policy of halting all such aid to Gaza. “Blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population,” claimed Katz.

Blocking aid means Israel is weaponising starvation to carry out its genocide.

Katz left that part out, though, because “preventing Hamas” from doing anything is a more convenient narrative that unites the international community in favour of Israel’s impunity.

An advisory ruling will be ignored by Israel, since it is non-binding. It will also take months, which means that Israel will continue starving Palestinians, under the pretext of eliminating Hamas. The most that can be expected, as Al Jazeera noted, is increasing pressure upon the apartheid state. Which essentially means that nothing will change, because too many countries are complicit with, or participants in, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

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There is a time and place for advisory opinions, which should happen before the inevitable is set in motion. Although the notion that an advisory opinion is needed to decide whether international law violations and war crimes should be stopped is a contradiction in itself, because the illegal remains illegal. What, then, is the point of advisory rulings, when they can’t be enforced; in this case, to stop Israel from continuing its genocide in Gaza?

Do Palestinians in Gaza really need to wait for more proof to be presented to yet another international institution that ultimately has no power to stop the genocide? We have all seen the death and destruction on social media.

Nobody can say, “We didn’t know.”

It boils down to advisory rulings being given as much weight as non-binding UN resolutions in terms of endless debate and no action. Palestinians cannot be used as cannon fodder for the advisory ruling to “shape future international legal approaches.” Is it not enough that Gaza is the laboratory for Israel to test ever-more lethal weaponry and munitions? That Palestinians are the targets in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of all of Palestine? Is justice going down the same road as colonialism and its accomplices under the pretext of shaping legal approaches?

So far today, on its second day of hearings, the ICJ has heard about Israel livestreaming genocide and that “under the world’s watchful eye, Palestinians are being subjected to atrocity, crimes, persecution, apartheid and genocide.” The latter observation by South Africa’s representative has one wondering what the “world’s watchful eye” really means. South Africa’s consistency in taking up the legal challenges is admirable. However, the phrase used only reflects the international community’s usual passive observation, which poses no threat to Israel. The ICJ hearings risk becoming more of the same examples of international complacency.

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