NGOs call for Africa, world to support SA at ICJ

South Africa instituted proceedings against the State of Israel at the ICJ and requested the court to indicate provisional measures aiming to end Israel’s genocide in Palestine.

The country's best legal minds, including senior counsel Adila Hassam, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, an advocate of the Johannesburg Bar, and international lawyer Max Du Plessis, will present their case at the UN’s top court on Thursday morning.

Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, says while the organisation has not made a determination that the situation in Gaza amounts to genocide, there are alarming warning signs given the staggering scale of death and destruction with more than 23,000 Palestinians killed in just over three months.

"There is no end in sight to the mass human suffering, devastation and destruction we are witnessing on an hourly basis in Gaza. The risk that Gaza would be transformed from the world’s biggest open-air prison to a giant graveyard has crushingly materialised right before our eyes.

“As the United States continues to use its veto power to block the UN Security Council from calling for a ceasefire, war crimes and crimes against humanity are rife, and the risk of genocide is real. States have a positive obligation to prevent and punish genocide and other atrocity crimes. The ICJ’s examination of Israel’s conduct is a vital step for the protection of Palestinian lives, to restore trust and credibility in the universal application of international law, and to pave the way for justice and reparation for victims.”

“All states have an international legal obligation to act to prevent genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 and, as determined by the ICJ previously, under customary law. This means that the obligation to prevent is binding on all states, including states that are not party to the Convention. On 16 November 2023, a group of UN experts warned of a “genocide in the making” in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and particularly in Gaza," said Callamard.

Meanwhile, Gift of the Givers's Imtiaz Sooliman has lauded South Africa's move to take legal action.

"This is no ordinary legal battle. This is Herculean, the fight for truth over falsehood, good over evil, Africa over the West, oppression against imperialism and colonialism, freedom against apartheid.  

“Africa is the embodiment of religious practice, spirituality, Ubuntu and humanity. As a continent, we understand imperialism, colonialism, oppression, injustice, apartheid, bullying, hunger, thirst and medical ‘suffering’.

“The African Union should be at the forefront, supporting South Africa's principled stand at the ICJ, both as a collective, but importantly as individual nation-states.”

South African Jews for a Free Palestine also expressed its full support for the government's decision.

"Thinking together about these connected apartheids and legal architectures from our vantage point as Jewish South Africans, we express our absolute condemnation of the genocide in Palestine and of the violent vandalisation of our Jewish faith as it has been manipulated to support apartheid and settler colonial genocide in Palestine and globally through the conflation of Judaism and Zionism and antisemitism and anti-Zionism. This conflation is ahistorical, inaccurate, racist, and dangerous,” the organisation said in a statement.

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