The sentence went out under the name of the International Court of Justice. The office that typed it is the Registry. Press Release No. 2026/24, dated 22 September 2026, is marked unofficial, and the same text states that the Court's press releases "are prepared by its Registry for information purposes only and do not constitute official documents." A Registry circular is not an order, not a judgment, and not a determination that anyone committed genocide.
What the withdrawal is
The notice records a fact of procedure: on 18 September 2026 Colombia told the Court it was withdrawing the Declaration of intervention filed on 5 April 2024 under Article 63 of the Statute. In the same release the Registry explains the article. Article 63 "affords States not parties to a dispute the right to intervene in a case when that case concerns the construction of a convention to which they are also parties"; the Court's later interpretation then binds the intervener. Construction of a treaty text. Not joinder as a co-applicant. Not a finding of state responsibility. Colombia's new government pulled a Petro-era filing. The Jerusalem Post reported Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar thanking President Abelardo De la Espriella for "withdrawal from South Africa's false and malicious lawsuit against Israel at the ICJ, which was made during the antisemitic Petro era."
That is all the operative sentence does. It does not try the merits. It does not measure bodies. It does not convert South Africa's 29 December 2023 Application into a conviction.
What the caption is made to do
The Registry still locates the withdrawal inside "the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)." That string is the applicant's docket title. Later in the same notice the Registry itself describes South Africa's filing as concerning "alleged violations by Israel of its obligations under the Genocide Convention." Alleged. This wording presents the genocide caption as the Court's established subject. The record does not. South Africa asked the Court to "adjudge and declare" breaches. The Court has not done so.
In the Order of 26 January 2024 the Court was dealing with a request for provisional measures. The Court's Summary 2024/1 records that South Africa sought those measures "pending the Court's determination of this case on the merits." The Court indicated measures. It was not then deciding whether Israel had violated the Genocide Convention. That question is for the merits. Provisional measures are not a merits judgment. A 2026 clerk's notice that one Article 63 intervener walked away does not supply the missing judgment.
What the history section skips
The "History of the proceedings" in 2026/24 opens on 29 December 2023 with South Africa's Application. The war opened on 7 October 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists murdered more than 1,200 people and abducted 251, the IDF records. Hamas, the Islamist terror regime that ruled Gaza, planned and executed that massacre. The Registry's bulletin does not name Hamas as the author of the attack that produced the campaign South Africa then styled as genocide. It treats the relevant history as a lawsuit.
Hamas is not a State party before the Court. The last lines of the release remind readers that the Court settles disputes submitted by States. The notice still ships South Africa's caption into circulation as if a withdrawn intervention were another paper in a genocide file that has never been judged. They used an unofficial Registry circular as a substitute for a conviction.