South Africa officially accused Israel before the International Court of Justice (CIJ) through a request filed on December 29, 2023 in which it denounced the Zionist entity to engage in “acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza”. Today, the CIJ has started its first session to examine the demand of South Africa.
In this request filed within the main judicial body of the United Nations, South Africa affirms that the “acts and omissions of Israel are of a genocidal character, because they are accompanied by the specific intention required (…) to destroy the Palestinians of Gaza as part of the national, racial and ethnic group of the Palestinians”.
South Africa considers that Israel is lacking in the obligations incumbent upon it under the Convention against the Genocide, which has made nearly 24,000 martyrs since the start of the war between Hamas and Israel, on October 7 in the Gaza Strip, including a majority of women and minors.
It was today, Thursday January 11, 2024 that Israel faced the CIJ before these accusations. In its 84 -page request addressed to the Court which sits in The Hague, South Africa urges judges to order an emergency in Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations” in the Gaza Strip, believing that Israel “gives itself and risks continuing to engage in acts of genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza”.
The court thus declared that this trial requires the immediate cessation of the military operations of the Zionist entity, in the Gaza Strip.
The state subsectary in South Africa considered that the “Nakba” continued for the Palestinian people, since the colonization of Palestine in 1948, stressing that the Palestinian people were divided and moved and that their international rights have been violated, in particular the rights to self-determination and return.
He declared that the laws of the Zionist entity are racist, with regard to the Palestinian people and that their violations have extended over decades, during which it has escaped any punishment, declaring: “the occupying state dared to repeat and intensify its crimes in Palestine”.