Once again, South Africa has taken the lead in the moral fight to end the genocide in Gaza and uphold international law, established in the wake of the Allied World War II effort to shut down the Nazi regime in Germany. Commenting on the Sept. 16 release of the UN Commission’s two-year investigation, which found that Israel’s mass killings of women and children in Gaza and the weaponization of food went beyond being war crimes, rising to the official level of legally-established genocide, South Africa called out the civilized world to do its legal and moral duty in ending it.
Spokesman for its foreign ministry, Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), Chrispin Phiri declared: “The Government of the Republic of South Africa takes solemn account of the findings of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory…. This report stands as a stark confirmation of the very dire situation that compelled South Africa to approach the International Court of Justice.” Over the last two years, South Africa has submitted three dossiers of evidence to the UN Security Council, calling for enforcement of the ICJ rulings. Pretoria’s position has been fully, belatedly, justified.
The ministry simultaneously released a statement, which said that, after the ICJ in December 2023 made its initial, temporary ruling of genocide, it “subsequently issued three successive orders on provisional measures on 26 January, 28 March, and 24 May 2024, aimed at protecting Palestinians in Gaza from irreparable harm. It is with profound disappointment that the Commission’s report highlights the regrettable fact that these binding interim orders have not been heeded by Israel….
“In the face of this latest report, which provides a comprehensive, forensically detailed account of an ongoing genocide, the need for international action has never been more urgent…. As the Commission makes clear, parties to the [Genocide] Convention are obliged to: ensure that Israel implements all orders for provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice; cooperate to bring to an end all Israeli actions in Gaza that amount to a violation of the Genocide Convention; take steps to ensure the prevention of conduct that may amount to an act of genocide under the Genocide Convention, including the transfer of weapons that are used or likely to be used by Israel to commit genocidal acts.”
It concludes: “It is increasingly clear that Palestinian people are facing a threat of erasure in real time; the entire system of international law is on the line. At stake is not merely the fate of the Palestinian people, but the very principle of justice over impunity.”
