On a cold day in early January 2024, protesters gathered outside the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to denounce Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, then nearly 100 days old.
More than 3,000km (1,864 miles) away, some Palestinians in Gaza followed the proceedings , livestreamed on YouTube, but most were trying to survive Israel’s relentless bombardment.
In nearly eight decades of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, only a handful of cases had ever reached the court. That day, South Africa was asking the world’s highest court to consider whether Israel’s assault on Gaza constituted a genocide - the destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group.
Inside the courtroom, Irish lawyer Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, who was representing South Africa, began to speak.
“The international community continues to fail the Palestinian people,” she told the judges, despite Israeli officials’ “dehumanising, genocidal rhetoric” matched by the military actions in Gaza.
“This is the first genocide in history, where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time, in the desperate, so far vain, hope that the world might do something,” she said.
An average of 247 Palestinians were being killed every day, Ni Ghralaigh told the court; 48 mothers, two every hour; more than 117 children daily, five each hour.
She referred to the new acronym used among doctors and aid workers that had emerged from the devastation: WCNSF - wounded child, no surviving family. By that point, more than 7,000 Palestinians had been killed.
“These facts,” Ni Ghralaigh said, “could not present a clearer or more compelling case” for genocide.
On January 26, 2024, the ICJ ruled that there was a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza and ordered provisional measures. Crucially, it reminded all states party to the Genocide Convention, of which there are 153 , of their obligations: to act to prevent genocide.
But over the next 22 months, the killing continued. By the time a ceasefire was reached in October 2025, more than 70,000 people had been killed, with some 171,000 injured.
Throughout that period, the weapons to Israel kept flowing.
A months-long Al Jazeera investigation has found that military-related goods originating from at least 51 countries and self-governing territories continued entering Israel after the ICJ’s warning of a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza.
Based primarily on an analysis of Israeli Tax Authority (ITA) import data between 2022 and 2025, and supported by customs records and freedom of information requests, the investigation traced military supply chains linked to countries across Europe, Asia, North America and South America. All named countries are signatories to the Genocide Convention.
In some cases, the military-related goods originated from countries that had formally imposed arms embargoes on Israel or had partially suspended arms supplies to the country.
In fact, according to the ITA data, arms imports increased after the ICJ ruling, with the largest share falling under the category of munitions.
The five largest countries of origin for military-related goods entering Israel - the United States, India, Romania, Taiwan and the Czech Republic - all recorded increased shipments during the war.
While many countries included in this investigation do not share statistics on arms exports to Israel, the ITA data shows that 2,603 consignments of military-related goods - including imports labelled as goods related to ammunition, explosive munitions, weapons parts and armoured vehicle components - entered Israel between October 2023 and October 2025.
In total, the imports were valued at 3.22 billion shekels ($885.6m), with 91 percent of that value recorded after the ICJ’s ruling, according to the ITA data.
By comparison, in the 20 months before October 2023, military-related imports to Israel totalled 1.41 billion shekels ($388.1m). The data suggests Israel increased its dependence on foreign weapons supplies to help sustain its military offensive in Gaza.
Even after the latest ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025 , the flow of weapons did not stop. In the final two months of 2025, Israel received an additional 324.9 million shekels ($89.4m) in military-related imports, according to the ITA data.
