Israel Charged with Genocide at the International Court of Justice

On December 29, the government of South Africa filed an application instituting proceedings against the government of Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN) and is also sometimes referred to as the World Court. The application states that Israel has violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, or the Genocide Convention, with its military operations in the Gaza Strip ongoing since October 7.

South Africa condemns the October 7 attacks in Israel by Palestinian armed groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in which 1,139 people were killed, according to Israeli officials, including 373 security force members, 695 Israeli civilians, and 71 foreigners. Among the Israeli civilians killed were 36 children. However, as South Africa also points out, no armed attacks, however atrocious, could possibly justify retaliatory acts of genocide.

The application states:

The acts and omissions by Israel complained of by South Africa are genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group, that being the part of the Palestinian group in the Gaza Strip (‘Palestinians in Gaza’). The acts in question include killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. The acts are all attributable to Israel, which has failed to prevent genocide and is committing genocide in manifest violation of the Genocide Convention, and which has also violated and is continuing to violate its other fundamental obligations under the Genocide Convention, including by failing to prevent or punish the direct and public incitement to genocide by senior Israeli officials and others.

South Africa also notes the importance of placing Israel’s acts of genocide “in the broader context of Israel’s conduct towards Palestinians during its 75-year-long apartheid, its 56-year-long belligerent occupation of Palestinian territory and its 16-year-long blockade of Gaza, including the serious and ongoing violations of international law associated therewith, including grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and other war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

The genocide is being perpetrated “against a background of apartheid, expulsion, ethnic cleansing, annexation, occupation, discrimination, and the ongoing denial of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”, the application states.

Additionally, Israel’s military operation, dubbed “Operation Swords of Iron”, is being conducted with openly genocidal intent. The application provides extensive documentation of Israeli political leaders and military officials expressing their calculated aim of bringing about the physical destruction of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.

The estimated Palestinian death toll at the time of the application’s submission was over 21,110. Thousands of others are missing and presumed dead under the rubble, and tens of thousands have been injured.

The fact that Israel’s actions reflect the transparent genocidal intent is evident from the proportion of civilians killed. Setting aside evidence that at least some Israeli civilians were killed by Israel’s own security forces on October 7 and attributing all deaths to the indiscriminate violence by Palestinian militants, we can see that about 67 percent of the dead were civilians, and about 3 percent were children.

This contrasts with the estimate that about 70 percent of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza have been women and children. Children alone make up over 36 percent of deaths, with the estimate at the time being over 7,729 children killed. These numbers reflect the indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment and belie the preposterous claim that the Israeli military does everything possible to avoid harm to civilians.

While Western media continue to refer to the ongoing violence as the “Israel-Hamas War”, the stark observable reality is that Israel, which boasts one of the most powerful militaries in the world, is targeting the defenseless civilian population of the concentration camp known as Gaza, a densely populated strip of land with about 2.3 million people, 70 percent of whom are refugees or their descendants from the Zionist forces’ ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, and about half of whom are children.

Referring to the clear repeated incitements to genocide by prominent Israeli figures, the application states:

That intent is also properly to be inferred from the nature and conduct of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, having regard inter alia to Israel’s failure to provide or ensure essential food, water, medicine, fuel, shelter and other humanitarian assistance for the besieged and blockaded Palestinian people, which has pushed them to the brink of famine. It is also clear from the nature, scope and extent of Israel’s military attacks on Gaza, which have involved the sustained bombardment over more than 11 weeks of one of the most densely populated places in the world, forcing the evacuation of 1.9 million people or 85% of the population of Gaza from their homes and herding them into ever smaller areas, without adequate shelter, in which they continue to be attacked, killed and harmed.

In addition to the massive death toll, Israel’s actions make clear its intent to render Gaza uninhabitable and to deny the Palestinians the means to survive. As South Africa observes,

Israel has also laid waste to vast areas of Gaza, including entire neighbourhoods, and has damaged or destroyed in excess of 355,000 Palestinian homes, alongside extensive tracts of agricultural land, bakeries, schools, universities, businesses, places of worship, cemeteries, cultural and archaeological sites, municipal and court buildings, and critical infrastructure, including water and sanitation facilities and electricity networks, while pursuing a relentless assault on the Palestinian medical and healthcare system. Israel has reduced and is continuing to reduce Gaza to rubble, killing, harming and destroying its people, and creating conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction as a group.

Further,

Entire multi-generational families have been wiped out completely. Over 355,000 homes equivalent to more than 60 per cent of Gaza’s housing stock in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed. 1.9 million Palestinians — approximately 85 per cent of the total population — have been internally displaced. Many fled the north of the territory to the south, having been ordered to do so by Israel, only to be bombed again in the south, and told to flee once again further south or the south west, where they are reduced to living in makeshift tents in camps with no water, sanitation or other facilities. Israel has bombed, shelled and besieged Gaza’s hospitals, with only 13 out of 36 hospitals partially functional, and no fully functioning hospital left in North Gaza. Gaza’s healthcare system has all but collapsed, with reports of operations, including amputations and caesarean sections, taking place without anaesthetic. A significant proportion of the wounded and sick are unable to access any or adequate care. Contagious and epidemic diseases are rife amongst the displaced Palestinian population, with experts warning of the risk of meningitis, cholera and other outbreaks. The entire population in Gaza is at imminent risk of famine, whereas the proportion of households affected by acute food insecurity is the largest ever recorded according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (‘IPC’). Experts warn that silent, slow deaths caused by hunger and thirst risk surpassing those violent deaths already caused by Israeli bombs and missiles.

While apologists for Israel’s systematic violation of Palestinians fundamental human rights like to claim that Israel’s occupation of Gaza ended in 2005 with the withdraw of Israeli forces and settlers under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement plan”, it is an uncontroversial point of fact under international law that Israel remains the Occupying Power. As South Africa points out (bold emphasis added),

Notwithstanding its ‘disengagement’, Israel continues to exercise control over the airspace, territorial waters, land crossings, water, electricity, electromagnetic sphere and civilian infrastructure in Gaza, as well as over key governmental functions, such as the management of the Palestinian population registry for Gaza. Given that continuing effective control by Israel over the territory, Gaza is still considered by the international community to be under belligerent occupation by Israel. The near total control exercised by Israel over access to Gaza, and over its water, fuel, electricity and food supplies, has been demonstrated starkly since 7 October 2023.

South Africa is not alone in describing Israel’s actions as constituting the crime of genocide. Other countries whose officials have described it as such include Algeria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Honduras, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Malaysia, Mauritania, Namibia, Pakistan, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela.

The United States, on the other hand, has also been in violation of the Genocide Convention by not only failing to act to prevent genocide but by actively supporting it. The US government has financed and armed Israel for the specific purpose of enabling the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to carry out its operations in Gaza, and the US has continued to block efforts at the UN Security Council, where the US wields a veto power, to pass a legally binding resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire.

In response to the failure of the Security Council to act because of US complicity in the genocide, the UN General Assembly, whose resolutions are not legally binding on member states and where the US does not wield a veto power, voted on December 12 on a ceasefire resolution. The result was 153 countries voting in favor, 23 abstaining, and 10 voting against it, including Israel and the US.

This complicity by the US government in Israel’s genocide follows on decades of US support for Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinians’ human rights.

On November 30, the General Assembly held a vote on its annual call for a “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine”, which advocates the two-state solution premised upon the applicability of international law to the conflict and the establishment of a Palestinian state along the pre-June 1967 lines (also known as the 1949 armistice lines or “the Green Line”). The result was 153 countries voting in favor, 10 abstaining, and 9 voting to reject the two-state solution, including Israel and the US.

On December 19, the General Assembly held a vote on its annual reaffirmation of “The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”. The result was 172 countries voting in favor, 10 abstaining, and 4 voting to reject the Palestinians’ right to self-determination, including Israel and the US.

The move by South Africa represents a glimmer of hope that humanity will ultimately prevail over barbarism. In addition to prompting the ICJ to render an authoritative advisory opinion as to whether Israel has breached of the Genocide Convention, the application will put additional pressure on the International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate body also headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, to investigate the events since October 7 and prosecute both Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The application also brings additional international pressure to bear on the US government to cease its efforts to block a ceasefire and to otherwise cease its complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.