South Africa has made a bold move by launching a case at the United Nations’ top court, accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. The country is now asking the court to order Israel to halt its attacks – the first such challenge made at the court over the current war. Israel has swiftly rejected the filing “with disgust.”
South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice alleges that “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character” as they are committed with the intent “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza” as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial, and ethnic group.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and many others in South Africa have strongly criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. They have even compared Israel’s policies regarding Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with South Africa’s past apartheid regime of racial segregation. Israel, however, rejects these allegations.
South Africa has asked The Hague-based court to issue an interim order for Israel to immediately suspend its military operations in Gaza. Israel has rejected the genocide accusations, calling it a “blood libel” and accusing South Africa of cooperating with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war.
South Africa can bring the case under the Genocide Convention because both it and Israel are signatories to it. Whether the case will succeed in halting the war remains to be seen.
The South African foreign ministry expressed grave concern for the civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip. The ministry added that there are “ongoing reports of international crimes, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes, being committed as well as reports that acts meeting the threshold of genocide or related crimes as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, have been and may still be committed in the context of the ongoing massacres in Gaza.”
South Africa’s president earlier accused Israel of war crimes and acts “tantamount to genocide.”