South Africa has asked the UN International Court of Justice to take additional measures against Israel for violating all existing rules.
Pretoria said: “The actions of the Israeli army have brought more than 2 million people in Gaza to the brink of starvation. Israel’s total blockade of the Strip, South Africa’s lawyers said, falls under the Genocide Convention and should therefore be considered by the Court.”
South Africa stressed that there are cases of ‘mass starvation’ in Gaza. The country is therefore calling on the UN court to urgently review Israel’s actions and order Tel Aviv to allow humanitarian supplies into Gaza.
“In light of the new facts and the changing situation in Gaza – in particular the situation of mass starvation caused by Israel’s continued gross violations of the Genocide Convention – South Africa urges the Court to take urgent action,” the appeal said.
In January, the UN International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an interim ruling ordering Israel to refrain from any action that could fall under the UN Genocide Convention. The court ordered Tel Aviv to ensure that its troops do not commit acts of genocide against Palestinians. South Africa also filed a case against Israel in the UN court, accusing the Israeli leadership of deliberately killing Palestinians in order to seize their territories.
In February, South Africa filed a second ‘urgent request’ with the court, asking it to consider whether the Israeli military operation against Rafah violated the interim measures the court adopted on 26 January. However, the Hague court refused to consider the urgent application.
At a hearing in January, Israel’s lawyers argued that the war in Gaza was ‘a legitimate defence of its people’ and that ‘Hamas is guilty of genocide’.
Humanitarian organisations point out that all of Gaza is suffering from catastrophic shortages of food, medicine and water, but the situation is most dire in the northern part of the Strip. Some 300,000 people still living in northern Gaza are forced to eat animal fodder in order to survive. The UN reports that one in six children under the age of two in the north suffer from severe malnutrition.
