Judges at the UN International Court of Justice have ruled on South Africa’s request for interim orders in a genocide case against Israel, requiring Israel to take security measures for Palestinians in Gaza – Washington Post.
The case was brought to the United Nations’ highest court amid Israel’s devastating, ongoing war with Hamas: the court ordered Israel to take additional measures to prevent killings and harm to Palestinians in Gaza. Supporters of the South African-led case had hoped the judges would approve the ceasefire.
Israel has fiercely fought the genocide charges. It considers the genocide charges against it “libel,” referring both to the 7 October Hamas attack that caused the current war and the deep history of the Holocaust that preceded the founding of the Jewish state.
“A terrorist organisation carried out the worst crime against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and now someone comes to defend it in the name of the Holocaust? What brazen gall,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in reaction to South Africa launching its case.
The rulings of the International Court of Justice are legally binding, but their implementation requires UN Security Council resolutions, which is unlikely in this context, given the United States’ longstanding practice of defending Israel from international censure.
South Africa’s legal team presented its arguments to the court a fortnight ago. More than 100 days of fighting has killed more than 25,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, driven more than 85 per cent of the population of Gaza from their homes, resulting in a potential famine and humanitarian crisis whose speed, scale and severity, according to international aid groups, is unparalleled in modern history.
“The scale of destruction in Gaza, the targeting of family homes and civilians, the war being a war on children, all make clear that genocidal intent is both understood and has been put into practice. The articulated intent is the destruction of Palestinian life,” said South African lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi.
In addition, the South African lawyers also presented a voluminous scroll of statements by Israeli officials and politicians that seemed to prove the “genocidal” intent of Israeli actions, including calls for the destruction of Gaza and the mass displacement of Palestinians living there.
Israel, on the other hand, noted that the quotes were cherry-picked and formulated at a moment of anger in Israeli society and do not reflect the official policy of the country’s military cabinet.
There were also remarks about the alleged hypocrisy of South Africa’s position, given its government’s good relationship with Russia during the conflict with Ukraine, but this was not “supernatural,” as European frustration with Ukraine and indifference and complicity in the Israel-Hamas conflict is already evident.
South Africa is not alone; it is supported by a number of countries in the so-called Global South, from Brazil to Turkey, from Colombia to Bangladesh. Israel, on the other hand, recently won support from Germany, which claimed that South Africa’s case had “no basis.”
South Africa is leading the charge against Israel out of a sense of historical commitment to the Palestinian people: “The significance of the fact that the country bringing the case is South Africa – an icon of the ravages of colonialism, settlement and apartheid – cannot be lost on anyone,” wrote Nesrine Malik, a Sudanese-British columnist for the Guardian. “It symbolises a vast racial injustice, too raw and recent to be dismissed as ancient history.”
