No Genocide Ruling Yet: ICJ Case Against Israel Drags On as Both Sides Trade Evidence Claims

The International Court of Justice has not ruled on whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza. It issued provisional measures in January 2024, reiterated in March and May 2024, warning of a "plausible risk" that Palestinians' rights under the Genocide Convention were being violated. The underlying case, filed by South Africa, remains open.

South Africa recently submitted new evidence to the ICJ arguing Israel has failed to comply with those provisional measures, according to Amnesty International. Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa director, Heba Morayef, stated that "Israel is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," and accused other states of providing Israel "diplomatic cover, financial resources and material support" that enabled it. Amnesty has held this position since well before the South African submission.

The Casualty Count

Gaza's Health Ministry, which operates under Hamas authority, says more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, including more than 1,330 since the ceasefire took effect last October, according to Breitbart's reporting. Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack killed 1,221 people in Israel, per an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Neither number is in serious dispute among the sources here, though the Gaza figures come from an authority controlled by one of the belligerents.

The Rubble Fight

Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, warned this week that Israel's large-scale removal of rubble in areas it controls risks destroying evidence, according to Breitbart. Albanese does not speak for the UN itself, a distinction Breitbart's own reporting notes, and she has drawn sustained criticism from Israel and its allies over her genocide accusations.

Her specific claim is concrete: Palestinian authorities estimate more than 10,000 people remain buried under debris across Gaza. Albanese cited the recent burial of 112 members of one extended family whose remains were recovered from a building destroyed in a November 2023 strike, while 41 others from the same strike were never located. She's calling for independent chain-of-custody protocols, documentation, and international criminal investigators before any further rubble clearing or displacement decisions. Whether Israel adopts any of it is worth watching in the coming months.

The Case Against the Genocide Label

A column by David Harsanyi, which ran nearly word-for-word in the Daily Signal, the Epoch Times and the Washington Examiner, argues the genocide framing collapses under its own numbers. In May 2025, Tom Fletcher, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told BBC Radio that 14,000 babies in Gaza would die within 48 hours without aid. UNICEF puts the total number of babies in Gaza at around 20,000, meaning Fletcher's framing implied 70% of all infants faced imminent death. Harsanyi's column argues the underlying UN estimate actually concerned roughly 14,000 cases of malnutrition among Gaza's roughly 1 million children over the following year, not babies dying within two days. The New York Times and other outlets reported Fletcher's claim without immediately flagging that gap, per the column.

The column also revisits a Times front-page photograph of an emaciated toddler, Mohammed Zakaria al Mutawaq, which it says omitted that the child had cerebral palsy and other preexisting conditions unrelated to hunger. And it cites a UNICEF-led Nutrition SMART Survey finding an acute malnutrition rate of 0.5% in Gaza, one of the lowest in the region, alongside claims the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation delivered roughly 187 million meal equivalents before the ceasefire.

That survey result deserves a caveat the column doesn't fully address: it's unclear from available reporting exactly when the survey was conducted relative to the ceasefire and the aid surge that followed it. A low malnutrition rate measured after a major increase in food deliveries doesn't necessarily describe conditions during the siege period when the worst starvation warnings were issued. The timing gap is a real hole in the "hoax" argument.

What's Actually Established

What's proven: no court has ruled genocide occurred; the ICJ has issued only provisional measures citing a "plausible risk" to Palestinian rights; a UNICEF-led survey found low acute malnutrition post-ceasefire; Fletcher's 48-hour framing didn't match UNICEF's own infant population figures.

What's alleged but unproven: that Israel is currently committing genocide (Amnesty, South Africa, Albanese); that Israel is deliberately destroying evidence via rubble removal (Albanese); that the entire genocide framing was manufactured (Harsanyi).

The system's design makes both claims hard to settle quickly. ICJ genocide cases can take years to reach a merits ruling, and evidence tied up in rubble, if Albanese is right, may not survive that long. Until the court rules or Israel adopts the evidence-preservation protocols Albanese is demanding, the genocide question stays exactly where it's been since January 2024: alleged, disputed, and unresolved by any binding legal finding.