Analysis What the court's decision means for Israel and the west

In seeking a provisional international order from the court of justice restraining Israel from committing potentially genocidal acts, South Africa did not just put Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the dock, but also the whole post-second world war rules-based order, including the authority of the ICJ itself.

- Patrick Wintour

Never has there been such a high profile case brought in the middle of such a bloody conflict, and rarely have so many staked so much on the outcome.

In the words of the Irish barrister Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, who set out part of South's Africa case to the court: "The imminent risk of death, harm and destruction that Palestinians in Gaza face today, and that they risk every day during the pendency of these proceedings, on any view justifies - indeed compels - the indication of provisional measures. Some might say that the very reputation of international law - its ability and willingness to bind and to protect all peoples equally hangs in the balance." Extraordinarily the court did not shirk what it regarded as its responsibilities. Even though it did not order a full ceasefire, it granted protective orders including an end to the killing of Palestinians in Gaza that went further than many international law experts were predicting.

The ruling is devastating for Israel and awkward for politicians such as the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who said the case was meritless, or the foreign secretary, David Cameron, who urged South Africa not to bandy around words such as genocide.

The highest court in the world, the apex of the United Nations, has found there is a plausible risk that Palestinians' rights to be protected from a genocide are under threat from Israel's actions. The irony of this is self-evident. The concepts of "crimes against humanity" and "genocide" were created by a Polish Jewish law professor, Raphael Lemkin.

For Israel itself, a nation born in 1948 in part out of the horrors of the Holocaust and centuries of persecution, this could be a moment for reflection. Its whole national identity is intertwined with the Holocaust, just as South Africa's is indivisible from apartheid.