from 21st Century Wire:
IMAGE: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, convening on May 24, 2024, ordering Israel to stop its assault on Rafah. (Image Source: ICJ)
Brett Wilkins writes for Common Dreams…
South Africa filed 750 pages of “overwhelming” proof that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands on Monday, the deadline for submitting final evidence in the ongoing trial.
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South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela delivered the legal document — known as a memorial — to the ICJ headquarters in the Dutch city. Under the court’s rules, the contents of the memorial cannot be made public at this time.
According to a statement from the office of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the memorial is a “comprehensive presentation of the overwhelming evidence of genocide in Gaza.”
The office said the document “contains evidence which shows how the government of Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life which are aimed at their physical destruction, and ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the International Court of Justice, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and forced displacement of Palestinians.”
“The evidence will show that undergirding Israel’s genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide, a failure by Israel to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself, and its failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide,” Ramaphosa’s office added.
South African President Cyril Ramaposa
South Africa’s filing comes amid Israel’s ongoing 387-day assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian and international agencies has killed at least 43,020 people — most of them women and children. At least 101,110 others have been wounded and over 10,000 Gazans are missing and believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed homes and other structures. Millions more Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened by Israel’s invasion and “complete siege” of Gaza.
The filing also comes one week after senior members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right cabinet and national lawmakers spoke at a conference advocating the ethnic cleansing and recolonization of Gaza.
Ramaphosa’s office lamented that “Israel has been granted unprecedented impunity to breach international law and norms for as long as the United Nations Charter has been in existence.”
“Israel’s continued shredding of international law has imperiled the institutions of global governance that were established to hold all states accountable,” the presidency’s statement asserted. “The glaring genocide in Gaza is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see.”
Ramaphosa’s statement continues:
“The Palestinian struggle against imperialism, Israeli apartheid, and settler colonialism is the daily reality of the Palestinian people. Since 1948, they have faced various forms of colonization, often backed by historical colonial powers and, more recently, by states intent on shaping a world order in their interests. The global fight against settler colonialism persists in some parts of the world, including in occupied Palestine, both in Gaza and the West Bank. The international community cannot stand idly by while innocent civilians — including women, children, hospital workers, humanitarian aid workers, and journalists — are killed for simply being. That is a world we cannot accept.”
“We reiterate our appeal for an immediate cease-fire in Palestine, in Lebanon, and entire region, and the start of a political process to ensure a just and lasting peace,” Ramaphosa’s office added.
South Africa also thanked the more than 30 countries and regional blocs, including the African Union and Arab League, that are supporting its case.
It could take years for the ICJ to deliver judgment in the case. In July, the tribunal issued a nonbinding advisory opinion that Israel’s occupation of Palestine — including the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem, Gaza, and Syrian Golan Heights — is an illegal form of apartheid that must end “as rapidly as possible.”
South Africa’s filing came on the same day that Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, published a report on Israeli “genocide as colonial erasure” in Palestine.
Israel vehemently denies it is committing genocide in Gaza, a position shared by the Biden administration, the country’s main benefactor.
Palestine advocates welcomed Monday’s filing, with Council on American-Islamic Relations national executive director Nihad Awad thanking South African leaders “for helping expose the far-right Israeli government’s genocide and genocidal intent in Gaza to the world community.”
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