Israel’s victory at the International Court of Justice this past week of getting a six month delay in the genocide case is once again both temporary and highly significant.
It is temporary because in January 2026, or at some point in the near future after that, Jerusalem will need to fight back against genocide allegations regarding its conduct of the current war.
It is highly significant because it means there are unlikely to be any major new consequences against Israel legally or diplomatically regarding the genocide allegations before sometime in 2026, or quite possibly not before even 2027.
This situation presents Israel with both opportunities and dangers.
The opportunities are to continue the war, if necessary, with somewhat (there will always by media scrutiny, but at least legally speaking) less scrutiny for another eight months and also having that additional time to better advance Israel’s own around 90 criminal probes and over 1,000 operational reviews of alleged crimes or conduct by its soldiers.
To date, Israel has moved at a snail’s pace, barely releasing results in any of its probes, issuing only a few indictments in cases of abuse of detained Palestinian prisoners, and issuing only a few interim probes results in high profile cases, such as the World Central Kitchen and International Red Crescent incidents.
With eight more months, maybe Israel will succeed better at publicizing the results of far more probes.
However, there are dangers that come along with the delay.
In January, the Jerusalem Post reported that the IDF would soon produce its first formal update on the probes of its own soldiers since August 2024.
Since then, that report has been delayed numerous times for a mix of other military and political reasons, but there was a clear expectation that Israel would produce a report before the expected major hearing before the ICJ in July.
Israeli legal officials also had an “upper hand” to get Israeli politicians and generals to sign off on publicizing more probe results due to the anticipated ICJ hearing.
But with that hearing now delayed until January 2026, will Israeli political officials and generals delay the update of probes for an additional eight months?
Domestic political pressure
Unfortunately, all signs are that IDF legal officials are so overwhelmed by the volume of cases and by the domestic political pressure which hounds them anytime they probe an IDF soldier, that defending Israel’s legitimacy globally by getting some reports out on probes in a reasonable time seems to be taking a back seat to playing defensive domestically.
This means that there are clear legal advantages to delaying the ICJ case, but there are legitimacy disadvantages which are already eating up at Israeli diplomatic and general public support, when Israel’s legal officials continue to move as slowly as they have to date.
Also, Israel will still face initial allegations next week of starvation and illegal blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Those allegations will likely remain at a preliminary level and only enter a substantive evidentiary phase at a much later date. And Israel will deny the starvation charges and argue that Gazans have enough food for at least several more weeks or more before there might be a need to allow additional new food supplies into Gaza.
But keeping all of these issues festering in the air instead of outrightly putting out Israel’s detailed narrative has a price.
A microcosm of this dynamic could be seen in the media coverage of the Red Crescent case.
After Israel put out its full version of the case and punished some soldiers, criticism of the IDF did not go away.
But it lost some of its poignancy and some of the oxygen of the saga as a “scandal” went away because Israel admitted to some errors and punished some soldiers.
The sooner Israel does the same on a larger scale, the sooner the Jewish state can start reclaiming its reputation in the world so that at least fair-minded Americans, Europeans, and some others will be able to stand more forthrightly by Israel
