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12-01-2024
THE HAGUE: South Africa’s application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) seeking to have the court declare Israel’s military assault on Gaza a genocide will be heard starting on Thursday in The Hague.
Israel has called the allegations “baseless” and accused South Africa of “cooperating with a terrorist organization.”
States including Turkey and Jordan have backed the case. Malaysia publicly offered South Africa its support. Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry described the proceedings as a “timely and tangible step towards legal accountability for Israel’s atrocities.”
Israel finds it is having to defend itself against arguments based on a convention that was drawn up in part to prevent a repetition of the Holocaust, which killed 6 million Jews.
The application asked the ICJ to take interim measures to immediately suspend Israel’s military operations in Gaza and “take all reasonable measures” to prevent genocide. In its 84-page brief, South Africa cites alleged incitement by top Israeli officials, including the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who referred to Palestinians in Gaza as “human animals,” as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comparison of Palestinians to the biblical story of the Amalek nation, which God ordered the Israelites to destroy.
Pretoria argues Israel’s military assault violates its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention, which defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group.”
The application condemns Hamas’s killing of 1,200 Israelis and foreign citizens and hostage-taking of around 247 people on Oct. 7 but argues that no attack can justify the killing of more than 22,000 Palestinians, including over 7,000 children, the number of dead at the time it was written.
Unlike previous cases at the International Criminal Court, which Israel has boycotted because it does not recognize that court’s authority, Israel has no choice but to appear in front of the ICJ as it is a signatory to the Genocide Convention and subject to the jurisdiction of the ICJ, the United Nations’ top legal body. Both sides are sending some of their best lawyers to The Hague. Pretoria is sending South African international law expert John Dugard, a former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. Meanwhile, Israel will be represented at the ICJ by the British lawyer Malcolm Shaw, an expert on territorial disputes.
Israel is also sending Aharon Barak, a retired Israeli Supreme Court president who is a Holocaust survivor and a fierce critic of the Netanyahu government’s judicial reform plan which adds to his credibility in the eyes of Netanyahu’s critics.
The application also raises possible reputational damage for the United States. As the International Crisis Group’s Brian Finucane argues “US officials risk complicity if Israel uses US support to commit war crimes.” The United States is increasingly isolated as one of the few countries that has stood resolutely behind Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and subsequent Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip amid growing international criticism over the dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza. (Int’l News Desk)
