{"id":18296,"date":"2026-06-02T19:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/18296\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T19:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:43:14","slug":"south-africas-icj-delay-may-hand-israel-legal-reprieve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/18296\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa\u2019s ICJ delay may hand Israel legal reprieve"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend, South Africa<\/a> asked the International Court of Justice<\/a> for an 18-month extension to reply to the Israeli defense team\u2019s latest legal brief in the genocide case it brought against Jerusalem in late 2023.<\/p>\n

South Africa had been expected to seek an extension after Israel filed its monumental, approximately 1,000-page, legal brief in mid-March.<\/p>\n

But it was also expected that South Africa would file an update in the spring-summer of 2026, with additional charges relating to 2025, to which Israel would likely need to respond by the spring of 2027.<\/p>\n

Instead, South Africa will have until November 22, 2027, to respond to Israel and file any updates, while Israel will have until May 22, 2029, to reply.<\/p>\n

This means that there will likely be no additional in-court hearings before late 2029, if not 2030.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s brief was viewed by its government lawyers as one of the most momentous international law and war defense documents in its history, with its legal brief to the ICJ systematically dissecting South Africa\u2019s claims.<\/p>\n

In addition to the main brief, which confronted the charges relating to the 2023-2024 period of the Israel-Hamas War, the document included an additional staggering approximately 4,000 pages of exhibits.<\/p>\n

South Africa has not yet submitted a detailed attack on the IDF\u2019s conduct in 2025.<\/p>\n

Some top IDF officials are more concerned about the threat to Israel from the ICJ than from the International Criminal Court<\/a> (ICC), according to IDF sources.<\/p>\n

However, South Africa\u2019s latest moves could betray its own concern that its case will fall apart under the scrutiny of bringing evidence and the high legal standards that reign in genocide proceedings.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Foreign Ministry said that \u201cAll the claims of \u2018urgency\u2019 have now turned into South Africa\u2019s quiet requests to buy more time.\u201d<\/p>\n

‘This case was never about the facts’<\/p>\n

It added, \u201cThis case was never about the facts. It has always been a propaganda campaign by South Africa in the service of Hamas, masquerading as a legal process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israeli Justice Ministry Deputy Attorney-General for International Law Gilad Noam said, \u201cIsrael\u2019s Counter-Memorial, together with the extensive evidence supporting it, demonstrates that South Africa\u2019s allegations are wholly unfounded and that this is a case that should never have been brought in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such a long delay by South Africa is likely a major procedural win for Israel as it shifts any verdict in the case likely into 2030 or later.<\/p>\n

This relieves Israel of some immediate pressure from potential legal, diplomatic, or economic consequences of further in-court hearings on the issue that could affect its reputation \u2013 even if it wins in the end.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

However, some Israeli sources said they fear that South Africa may not have asked for the delay merely to buy time to gather their case evidence. Rather, some sources said that South Africa may be hoping to return to the ICJ in 2029, once US President Donald Trump is out of office.<\/p>\n

South Africa may hope that the next US president will be more favorable to its position, which could help at the ICJ, where politics often impacts how certain judges vote.<\/p>\n

IDF on ‘chaotic messaging’ coming from senior Israeli officials\u00a0<\/p>\n

In confronting the ICJ challenge, some non-legal-team IDF officials have warned that their job has not been made easier by the lack of organized, coherent, and systematic global messaging coming from the government.<\/p>\n

Rather, IDF sources cautioned that the messaging coming from senior Israeli officials is often chaotic, and messages from some officials undermine significant hard work by the military to build trust and credibility worldwide.<\/p>\n

While IDF sources would not name specific officials, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir<\/a> and Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich have been lightning rods throughout their terms, with many democratic countries banning them from visiting, and both may now be on a list of Israeli officials whom the ICC is seeking to arrest.<\/p>\n

Defense Minister Israel Katz has not been publicly banned, but has angered foreign countries, including officials in the Trump administration, with some of his statements, and has generally had a less influential global profile than his predecessors.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, IDF officials would see a provocative statement from some Israeli political officials, and would then fatalistically go on with their work trying to improve Israel\u2019s reputation by improving the Palestinians\u2019 situation \u2013 knowing that the country would inevitably be hit with more anger in response to the statement.<\/p>\n

The IDF has closed dozens of alleged war crimes cases arising from the 2023-2024 period of the war, The Jerusalem Post reported exclusively on February 8.<\/p>\n

Generally, much more progress has been made in the 2023-2024 period than in more recent incidents, which only occurred in 2025.<\/p>\n

Publication of the details of the case closures has been extensively delayed by fears that the ICJ and ICC would abuse any new information in a politicized anti-Israel agenda.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, whether the ICJ\u2019s giving 18-month and 36-month extensions to South Africa and Israel is a clean and unambiguous procedural win for Israel, or whether it also carries future potential political risks, it appears that the delay in the case may also delay Israel\u2019s readiness to tell its full legal defense story in detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last weekend, South Africa asked the International Court of Justice for an 18-month extension to reply to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11850,1089,2050,8401,11065,277,6316,42],"class_list":["post-18296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-hague","tag-gaza-war","tag-genocide","tag-icc","tag-icj","tag-idf","tag-israel","tag-south-africa","tag-the-hague"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18296\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}