South Africa has escalated its legal efforts against Israel by petitioning the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the implementation of stringent measures against the Jewish State, in response to the ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza.
In its petition to the global tribunal on Wednesday, South Africa asserts that it finds itself compelled to seek the Court’s intervention again due to the emergence of “new facts” and shifts in Gaza’s situation, notably the “widespread famine,” which it attributes to Israel’s “continuous and egregious breaches” of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
“South Africa respectfully calls on this Court to act again now — before it is too late — to do what is within its power to save Palestinians in Gaza from genocidal starvation,” the petition reads.
In January, the ICJ mandated Israel to abstain from any actions that could be construed as genocidal under the Genocide Convention and to ensure that its military forces refrained from committing genocidal acts against Arabs. This order followed South Africa’s allegations of state-sanctioned genocide by Israel, a claim that Israel and its Western allies have staunchly denied as baseless.
