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’s own allies in Europe are now widening.

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.

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.

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.

South Africa’s 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.

The process as punishment

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.

Even October’s ceasefire changed nothing on paper. President Cyril Ramaphosa told South Africa’s parliament in October that the truce “will have no bearing on the case that is before the International Court of Justice.” Israel finally filed its response this........

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