This week, three months into the catastrophic and continuing obliteration of Palestinian life in Gaza, the Israeli state will stand accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On one level, this may seem a remarkable turn of events. On another, perhaps the only surprise is that it has taken this long.

In mid-October, a week into an Israeli onslaught that had already established itself as a campaign of ethnic cleansing and annihilation, over eight hundred scholars of international law and genocide studies issued a public statement raising the alarm at the prospect of an unfolding genocide in Gaza.

They emphasized the duties of all states to prevent the perpetration of genocide and pointed to legal proceedings at the ICJ under the 1948 Genocide Convention as one of the avenues to try and do so. Since then, twenty-two UN special rapporteurs, fifteen UN working groups, the director of UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the UN Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women have all echoed the warnings of genocide.