Like I said, I’m actually not that smart and you’ll certainly find flaws at my poor attempt at understanding a legal document.
I—nor any uptread posts I read—claimed that the court found and ruled that Israel had engaged in Genocide. Merely that the court found it was plausible. I stand by these words, that the court did indeed find it plausible.
As I understand it everything in Article IV (including Paragraph 62) in the January 26 order was relating to the preliminary measures as requested by South Africa. Everything ruled there would be without prejudges with respect to the final ruling, as Article IV’s primary function is to prevent the Palestinian people from genocide (a function it has utterly failed at in my frank opinion).
Article II is, however, very relevant in the context of arguing whether the World Court finds the genocide accusation plausible. Article II is all about establishing jurisdiction, which it does by establishing that Article IX of the Genocide Convention applies. Article IX says:
> Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.
Article III of the Genocide convention lists every crime which is punishable by the convention, including (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; and (e) Complicity in genocide.
By establishing jurisdiction the case the court must find that Article IX applies, and to find that Article IX applies, it must show that it believes Israels conduct may be in violation of the genocide convention. Or as the ruling says (Paragraphs 19-20):
> To determine whether a dispute exists in the present case, the Court cannot limit itself to noting that one of the Parties maintains that the Convention applies, while the other denies it
> Since South Africa has invoked as the basis of the Court’s jurisdiction the compromissory clause of the Genocide Convention, the Court must also ascertain, at the present stage of the proceedings, whether it appears that the acts and omissions complained of by the Applicant are capable of falling within the scope of that convention ratione materiae.
In other words, if the court would not believe that Israel’s conduct (as described by South Africa) does not fall inside the Genocide Convention, then the court would reject the case on the grounds that it does not have jurisdiction.
Note, I think this was most of Israel’s legal defense, that it was trying to establish that their conduct does indeed not fall within the Genocide Convention.
The crucial finding (as my limited mind understands it) is then in Paragraph 30:
> In the Court’s view, at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the Convention.
To my ears, this sounds like—while the court hasn’t issued a final ruling—it does indeed find it plausible that Israel is committing a genocide.
EDIT: The only other reading I can entertain is that the court believes none of the accusations brought by South Africa which fall under Article III (a) of the Genocide Convention are plausible, and merely some of the accusations relating to Article III (b)-(e) apply. In which case, I stand corrected.