While the Belgian government frames its participation as a technical contribution to the interpretation of the 1948 Genocide Convention, the substance of the application suggests a much more troubling motive.
By attempting to broaden the legal definitions of genocidal intent, Belgium is participating in a transparent effort to weaponise international law against the Jewish state.
Belgium’s intervention is not an isolated legal exercise but part of a broader, coordinated trend among certain states and non-governmental organisations to lower the bar for what constitutes “the crime of crimes”. For instance, Amnesty International’s 2024 report accusing Israel of genocide explicitly dismissed the current legal test for intent as an “overly cramped interpretation”.
Similarly, Ireland has lobbied the ICJ to abandon the rigorous “only reasonable inference” standard in its own request to intervene. Belgium has now joined this chorus, advocating for a legal framework that prioritises political optics over established jurisprudence.
The Erosion of Specific Intent
The crux of the matter lies in the interpretation of “special intent,” the high legal threshold required to prove genocide. Under long-standing international case law, genocidal intent must be the “only reasonable conclusion to be drawn” from a pattern of action. This high bar exists for a reason: to distinguish the unique horror of genocide—the intentional destruction of a people—from the tragic but inevitable destruction associated with conventional warfare.
Belgium’s submission seeks to erode this distinction. Some of its claims are deceptively simple, such as the assertion that genocide can occur during wartime even if a state is pursuing a military objective. While technically true, this ignores the historical reality that in recognised genocides, the destruction of the protected group was a goal distinct from military victory.
More puzzling is Belgium’s argument that a state may be guilty of genocide even if it adheres to the demands of international humanitarian law (IHL), or the laws of war. This is a radical departure from legal logic. If a military force takes active precautions to limit civilian casualties, provides advance warnings before strikes, and distinguishes between civilian and military targets, it is logically inconsistent to claim that same force is simultaneously motivated by a “specific intent to destroy” that population.
Ignoring Precedent: From Croatia to Rwanda
To support its expansionist view, Belgium relies heavily on a minority opinion from the 2015 Croatia v. Serbia case, which suggested that genocide could be utilised as a means of achieving a military objective. However, this ignores the actual rulings of the ICJ and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
During the 1991 Croatian War of Independence, Serbian troops besieged and eventually destroyed the city of Vukovar. Despite the scale of the atrocities, both the ICTY and the ICJ ruled that these actions did not demonstrate genocidal intent. Instead, the courts found that the harsh treatment of the city was motivated by a Serbian desire to assert territorial control.
The Court maintained this standard when examining “Operation Storm” in 1995, a Croatian military offensive that resulted in the mass displacement of over 200,000 Serbs. The ICJ held that if the shelling of towns can be explained by military necessity or a desire to force a population to flee, then genocidal intent is not the “only reasonable inference”.
Belgium’s submission also attempts to draw parallels between the current conflict in Gaza and historical genocides like the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Srebrenica by noting they all occurred during wartime. This comparison is profoundly misleading.
Germany’s systematic destruction of European Jewry was a project separate from its war effort. In Rwanda, the ICTR held that the genocide was “fundamentally different” from the armed conflict between Hutu and Tutsi forces. In Srebrenica, the massacre of men and boys occurred after the area was fully under the control of Bosnian Serb forces, meaning the victims posed no military threat.
The Khmer Rouge’s genocide against ethnic Vietnamese and Cham Muslim was carried out through a highly organised state machinery, including concentration camps, torture facilities and killing grounds. In contrast, there is no legal precedent for finding genocide based on collateral civilian damage occurring in an active war zone where military objectives are being pursued.
The Consequences of “Genocide” as a Result
By pushing these arguments, Belgium is effectively attempting to transform genocide from a crime of “specific purpose” into a crime of “result”. The drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention were clear: the mere fact of civilian casualties or widespread damage, however catastrophic, does not automatically equate to illegality, let alone genocide.
Since Israel launched its operations following the October 7th massacre, its leadership has consistently stated that its objective is the defeat and overthrow of the Hamas regime. While urban conflict is inherently devastating—particularly when civilian populations are prevented from evacuating—the inference of genocide from large-scale military action has profound and dangerous implications.
If the “genocide” label is applied as loosely as Belgium suggests, Western commanders in the United States and Europe could find themselves facing legal and diplomatic paralysis. In an era where conventional threats are growing in Eastern Europe and the Taiwan Strait, conflicts requiring massive, rapid force could result in destruction on a scale that dwarfs Gaza. By diluting the legal definition of genocide to score political points against Israel today, Belgium is setting a precedent that could leave the West defenceless tomorrow.
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