OPINION - Türkiye intervenes in ICJ Gaza genocide case, more governments should follow

By Luigi Daniel

-The author is senior lecturer in international law at England's Nottingham Law School.

ISTANBUL (AA) – This week the International Court of Justice (ICJ) registrar has received the Republic of Türkiye’s declaration that it is joining the case for violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide brought by South Africa against Israel. Türkiye is thus the seventh state to intervene in the proceedings, after Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, the state of Palestine, and Spain.

-Western countries argue ‘Israel has right to defend itself’

In the now more than 10 months of Israeli assault on Gaza, with a record of daily atrocities against civilians unparalleled in the armed conflicts of the 21st century, everything has changed in the international community. The Israeli military offensive in response to the attacks last Oct. 7 began with the unconditional support of dozens of Western governments, led by the United States, repeating that the state of Israel has the right to defend itself.

The Biden administration sent to Israel, among other weapons, at least 14,000 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) bombs, each with a lethal impact radius of 365 meters (nearly 1,200 feet), capable of destroying and killing in an area of roughly 420 square meters (4,521 square feet) around the impact point. The US provided Israel with firepower to raze 5,800 square kilometers (2,239 square miles) to the ground, more than 15 times the total surface area of ​​the Gaza Strip. Nefariously, the US did so for an ally known to be dropping such US-provided bombs on refugee camps with 34,000 human beings, mostly children, per each square kilometer. In other words, a civilian extermination foretold, consciously enabled and supported.

Symmetrically, political elites in most NATO countries, obscuring the long-standing Israeli military strangulation and immiseration of Gaza, kept repeating the self-defense refrain, redundantly, while refusing for months to acknowledge the manifest international crimes resulting in continuous civilians and children massacres shocking the conscience of the world.

Some 40,000 Palestinians killed later, in 300 days the world has moved from one historical season to another: first a Security Council binding ceasefire resolution, then the arrest warrants request (for many crimes, including the crime against humanity of extermination) by the office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor, and lastly the historic ICJ advisory opinion have legally and definitively dismantled the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s talking points on Israel’s “security” reasons for its occupation and annexation. All these unveiled rather the racially segregationist, settler-colonial rationale of the Israeli presence in the state of Palestine, and declared its existential illegality. The age of Israel above the law, in other words, seems to have commenced its demise, as some of us had anticipated. [1] ​​​​​​​

- Türkiye's move is important after 'landslide' legal determinations of ICJ advisory opinion

The ICJ advisory opinion on the Israeli occupation and the South Africa versus Israel genocide case, considered together, illuminate how the West Bank and Gaza are both subject to different forms of the same, overarching eliminationist policy of the Israeli government. The nexus between the two proceedings at the ICJ, in fact, corresponds to the interdependence of, on the one hand, the settler-colonial annexation of the West Bank, aimed at erasing any chance of existence of Palestine as state, and, on the other, the Gaza genocide, with a military assault which is not saving hostages, is not eliminating Hamas, is bringing on Israeli citizens the highest levels of insecurity in decades, while effectively "achieving" only the depopulation Gaza. In both Gaza and the West Bank, the endgame appears that of forcing on the international community a criminal fait accompli of the impossibility of Palestinian life, self-determined existence, and survival as a national group.

The most interesting aspect of Türkiye's intervention is that it is the first state intervention in the genocide case which follows the “landslide” legal determinations of the ICJ advisory opinion.

Beyond the legal arguments, the significance of Türkiye's intervention is even higher in the domain of international power relations. A powerful NATO member shows that NATO does not need to be a monolith of states lining up behind the disastrous choices of its leading power. This is essential to translate legal victories in the realm of material realities. The legal victories of Palestine in the international arena, in fact, as well as the overwhelming support for Palestinian equality in global public opinion, have so far failed to stop the relentless, intolerable erasure of Palestinian life in Gaza. The distance between the determinations of international legal institutions and the lived reality of Palestinians has become an abyss, one in which the international legal order itself is being buried, with dire consequences for the future of all our societies. While the main protagonists of this divorce between international legality and foreign policy are Western governments, even the powers of the region have so far failed to enact concrete measures to prevent the final completion of the Gaza genocide and have not sanctioned the multilevel illegality of the Israeli policies. Some of those powers continue to de facto assist these serious violations.

- More states should intervene at ICJ for Palestine

Palestinians, in other words, are strong considering the statements of the third states but they are short of third states' economic and legal actions. Such persistent inaction has not only failed Palestinians in their darkest hour but has also emboldened the Israeli government to pursue regional escalation, drowning a full-blown war in its own failures, and cornering Western allies taking more and more distance to further support its crimes.

In such a catastrophic scenario, more states should intervene at the ICJ, and all should not wait further to take autonomous actions: they already have a legal duty to discharge their own obligations to prevent genocide, obligations now ineludible after three provisional measures orders by the ICJ itself ignored by Israel. The Gaza atrocities continuing after 10 months, in conclusion, forces all governments to make a choice, with no more middle ground: it’s either legality or barbarism, ''tertium non datur.”

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623528.2024.2325804

*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu