"Israel has committed, is committing and risks continuing to commit acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza." This is the accusation made by South Africa against the Jewish state for the war in the Strip, unleashed by the Hamas massacre on October 7 and which has so far killed more than 23,29 Palestinians. The petition was submitted by Pretoria on December <> to the International Court of Justice, the main judicial organ of the United Nations, provoking several international reactions - and the indignation of Israel - and will be discussed today and tomorrow in two public hearings at the Palais de la Paix in The Hague.
The first day will be dedicated to the prosecution's arguments, which will be presented by the South African delegation, led by Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, and composed of a team of diplomats, lawyers and international politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn, the former British Labour leader who has been repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism in his homeland. According to South Africa, Israel violates the Convention Against Genocide that it ratified in 1950.
In particular, the 84-page document submitted in The Hague reads, "Israel's acts and omissions are genocidal in character because they accompany the specific intent required to destroy Palestinians in Gaza as part of the broader national, racial and ethnic group of Palestinians." Pretoria also accuses Israel before the Court of Justice (which settles disputes between states, while the International Criminal Court pursues individual responsibility) of failing to fulfill "its obligations to prevent genocide, nor to prosecute" those responsible for "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" as required by the Convention.
In the petition, South Africa therefore asks the Court to impose "precautionary measures" (which would be binding) such as ordering Israel to cease the killings and "serious physical and mental harm inflicted" on Palestinians in Gaza and to allow access to humanitarian aid in the Strip. All accusations that Israel considers "unfounded". Tomorrow it will be the turn of his team of lawyers, including British Malcolm Shaw, to explain the reasons for Israel's war in the Gaza Strip.
"There is nothing more atrocious and absurd" than the lawsuit filed by South Africa, Israeli President Isaac Herzog anticipated, while on the eve of the hearing, Benyamin Netanyahu's government opened a website "to show the world some of the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas." "Tomorrow we will appear before the tribunal in The Hague: this site will help the State of Israel in its mission to remind the world that we are victims of the unprecedented terrorist event we have experienced," the prime minister's office said.
The United States has already sided with Israel, as has Great Britain. While speculating that "Israel may have violated international law in Gaza," former Tory prime minister and current foreign minister David Cameron criticized the South African move: "I don't think it's useful or even fair," he said. It is up to the courts to define the term genocide, not to states. Our view is that Israel has the right to defend itself."
But for South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, it is a moral duty, "a matter of principle." His party, Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, supports the Palestinian cause by comparing it to its own struggle against apartheid. According to many analysts, the decision to appeal to the International Court would have been dictated, internally, by the need to regain consensus in view of the 2024 general elections by proving faithful to its principles. And on the international level, by the desire to increase its influence, as a member of the BRICS, in favor of the global South.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that today's session of the Court of Justice in The Hague is "the Dreyfus Affair of the 21st century". Bennett called the meeting "a spectacle of hypocrisy, anti-Semitism and shame. It was Hamas that, for no reason, attacked, burned, killed and kidnapped Israelis on October 7. Yet it is Israel that is under indictment," he said. "Shame on those who take part in this fiction," he concluded.
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