Israel can still win the war in Gaza. It cannot win the argument that follows it. That is the gap accountability advocates keep pointing to, and it is the gap Israel\u2019s own allies in Europe are now widening.<\/p>\n
The war has split into three fronts. The military one, in Gaza, Israel controls. The legal one, in The Hague, and the diplomatic one, across European capitals, are slipping away. <\/p>\n
Military power buys territory. It does not buy legitimacy. And legitimacy, not tanks, is what determines whether a state can trade, arm itself, and sit at a table after the guns fall silent.<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s genocide case was the catalyst. It turned a bilateral war into a multilateral legal question, and once European governments started filing declarations of their own, that legal question became a diplomatic one that no single ceasefire can settle.<\/p>\n
The process as punishment<\/p>\n
South Africa filed its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in December 2023. The court has never ruled on the merits. It did not need to. Three rounds of provisional measures ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts and let humanitarian aid through. Israel largely ignored them. The case kept moving anyway.<\/p>\n
Even October\u2019s ceasefire changed nothing on paper. President Cyril Ramaphosa told South Africa\u2019s parliament in October that the truce \u201cwill have no bearing on the case that is before the International Court of Justice.\u201d Israel finally filed its response this March, after two extensions pushed the original deadline back by more than seven months. Oral hearings are not expected before 2027. A final judgment could land in 2028. The clock itself has become the pressure. Every extension Israel requests, every year the docket ages, adds to a record that keeps circulating long after any single verdict would.<\/p>\n
Where the accountability gap sits<\/p>\n
This is where MEMO\u2019s readers should look hardest, because the gap between legal finding and government action has never been wider than it is right now, in the country that hosts the court itself.<\/p>\n
In November, the Hague Court of Appeal ruled explicitly that there is \u201ca serious risk that Israel will commit genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza.\u201d It was the first time a national court had said so in those words. Then it dismissed the case, anyway, ruling that the Dutch government retains \u201cconsiderable discretion\u201d over arms exports and foreign policy. A court can now say the word genocide and still leave the weapons flowing. That is not a legal failure. It is a policy failure sitting on top of a legal finding, and it is precisely the kind of gap a genocide convention is supposed to close.<\/p>\n