South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced today during his state visit to Qatar that his government has submitted a referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate Israel’s unprecedented and appalling military actions in Gaza, which constitute war crimes. He called repeatedly for the whole world to put pressure on the Israeli government to answer the “desperate need” for a ceasefire to save innocent lives.
South Africa does not condone what Hamas did in Israel, nor can it condone “what is happening now in Gaza, which is now turned into a concentration camp, where genocide is taking place,” he said when speaking to media after his meeting with the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. “We are opposed to the operations that are ongoing, particularly as [Israel] is now targeting hospitals where babies, women and the injured are dying like flies, and where the care of life is something that has been completely ignored and pushed aside.”
At the end of another short video clip from his press conference, the South African President again spoke fiercely of the urgency of action. There are many people around the world who are “appalled” at what is happening, and “we join many other countries and organizations that are calling upon the ICC to investigate.… As it is unfolding before our eyes, we can see war crimes are underway, particularly at Al-Shifa Hospital…. [There is] a need for the whole world to rise and call upon the Israeli government to cease fire, to stop what is happening, and we want the ICC to investigate, and of course, legal measures then need to be taken at a global level.”
Ramaphosa spoke sharply, charging that Israel has “become a law unto themselves,” and is ignoring international law and the rules of war. It is unprecedented that nearly half of the more than 11,000 people killed in Gaza were children, he exclaimed, and it is completely unacceptable that children and even babies be subjected to such cruel deaths.
