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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.
South African Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela delivered
the legal documentùknown as a memorialùto 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 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 peopleùmost 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
civiliansùincluding women, children, hospital workers, humanitarian
aid workers, and journalistsùare 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 Palestineùincluding the West Bank, Eastern Jerusalem,
Gaza, and Syrian Golan Heightsùis 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."
"This detailed submission also further exposes the Biden
administration's criminal complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza,"
Awad added. "President [Joe] Biden should end his complicity with
genocide by stopping arms deliveries to Israel and forcing an
immediate cease-fire."
The Biden administration and Congress have provided Israel with tens
of billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover to
continue its war.
Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of
Illinois College of Law, noted that "Israel has violated three prior
orders from the court" and "has also violated the decision on Rafah of
May."
"Just after that decision, Biden put out his ridiculous statement that
Israel had agreed to a cease-fire, which it obviously didn't," he
continued. "The Biden administration's phony 'cease-fire negotiations' maneuvers have simply bought Israel more time to commit more crimes,
including its recent annihilation of northern Gaza."
"Given Israel's lack of respect for decisions of the court, it becomes imperative that these decisions have teeth," Boyle added. "The U.S.
veto at the U.N. Security Council has prevented that body from doing
its job. So, the U.N. General Assembly should utilize its Uniting for
Peace procedure to take control of the situation and recommend an arms
embargo and economic sanctions against Israel as well as other
measures. That's what was done to apartheid South Africa because of
its illegal occupation of Namibia."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/south-africa-icj-genocide-israel
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