JONNY STEINBERG: Whatever the ruling in The Hague, SA wins and law loses
For the government, seldom has so much been won so cheaply. But there is a sting in the tail
SA’s action at The Hague is likely to weaken the genocide convention, the credibility of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the already shaky authority of international criminal law. This will be so whatever provisional order the judges hand down in the coming days.
If the court orders a ceasefire, Israel will almost certainly ignore its ruling. And so will the US, which will keep funding Israel’s military campaign. As Yale University’s David Simon argued last week in the pages of the Financial Times, this will be catastrophic for the ICJ. “Should it call for measures that are not then implemented, all of its decisions would be devalued.” As for the genocide convention, it “will have shrunk to a toothless statement of aspirations, rather than an enduring commitment”...
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