Iceland and the Netherlands have lodged interventions in the genocide case that South Africa brought against Israel before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, according to Middle East Eye.

The two European states have now formalised their participation in South Africa v. Israel, the proceedings instituted under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). Under Article 63 of the ICJ Statute, a state party to a convention whose interpretation is at issue in a pending case has the right to intervene in the proceedings. A state may also seek permission to intervene under Article 62 if it considers that it has an interest of a legal nature that may be affected by the court's decision.

An intervention does not make a state a full party to the case. Rather, an intervening state under Article 63 becomes party to the proceedings in respect of the construction of the convention at issue, entitling it to submit written observations and, at the court's discretion, to be heard orally. The applicant and respondent remain South Africa and Israel respectively.

The precise legal basis on which Iceland and the Netherlands each filed — Article 62, Article 63, or both — is not stated in the report. The timing of the filings also falls outside the information available. The ICJ's own press materials will set out those details in due course.

For practitioners, the development signals continued third-state engagement with one of the most closely watched proceedings on the court's docket. States intervening in Genocide Convention litigation typically use the vehicle to advance their own reading of the convention's substantive obligations — including duties of prevention and punishment under Articles I and III — and to influence the interpretive framework the court will apply when it reaches the merits. Written observations from intervening states can shape the court's reasoning even where the interveners take no position on the relief sought by the applicant.

The case remains pending before the ICJ's full bench. The court has already issued provisional measures in the proceedings on earlier applications by South Africa; the interventions announced this week concern the substantive phase of the litigation, which will turn on whether the acts alleged against Israel breach the Genocide Convention.

Further procedural steps — including any objection by the parties to the interventions and the schedule for written observations — rest with the court under Articles 62(2) and 63(2) of the Statute and Articles 81–86 of the Rules of Court.