Germany is not suspected of violating international law through its arms deliveries to Israel. In particular, there is no suspicion of complicity in genocide. The International Court of Justice in The Hague decided this on Tuesday, rejecting an urgent application that the state of Nicaragua had submitted there last month.
The federal government approved arms exports to Israel worth a total of 326.5 million euros in 2023, which was a tenfold increase compared to the previous year. About 90 percent of these were approved in the first days after October 7, when Israel and observers worldwide were in shock at the massacres of Israeli civilians by the radical Islamic group Hamas. It took three weeks for the Israeli army to respond to these massacres with a ground offensive, i.e. to invade the Gaza Strip – although these German-made weapons may have been used. Specifically, it involves 3,000 portable rocket-propelled grenades and 500,000 rounds of ammunition for automatic rifles.
In his oral reasons for the decision on Tuesday, the court president also pointed out the following facts: The federal government soon stopped approving arms exports. Most recently, the volume of monthly approvals was less than one million euros; it only concerned smaller spare parts, for example for radar systems. At least this was what the representatives of the federal government themselves presented to the International Court of Justice when the proceedings took place there on April 8th and 9th.
The Court is an organ of the United Nations, its 15 judges represent all regions of the world and are elected by the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council for a period of nine years each. In this particular case, Nicaragua, which currently does not have any of the regular judges, was allowed to nominate an additional so-called ad hoc judge who was allowed to have a say. This was the former Jordanian Prime Minister, Aoun al-Khasawneh. The Lebanese Nawaj Salam, who was previously his country’s UN ambassador for a long time, has been the president of the court since February. But a judge from Germany was also involved in the decision on Tuesday, this is the Berlin law professor Georg Nolte.