South Africa will today submit a voluminous account of genocidal acts in Palestine to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In a memorial, they must furnish evidence that Israel is committing genocide in its war on Gaza.
Since October 2023, Israeli bombardment has buried generations of Palestinian families under tonnes of rubble. With more than 43 000 people killed, an entire population displaced and violence the new normal in Gaza, SA argues this amounts to genocide.
But, it has to prove it. The Oxford definition, that genocide is “the deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group”, is straightforward enough. The task of linking this to events in Gaza, not quite so.
“Previously, we have seen, in jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, that the court sets a very high bar to the kind of standards for proving genocidal intent,” Southern Africa Litigation Centre’s (SALC) Dr Atilla Kisla told Newzroom Afrika.
In order to place the proof on paper, “they are going to focus on these various areas of violations of international law in order to prove that Israel has violated key provisions of the Genocide Convention. In that regard, South Africa will have to prove, for instance, that responsible authorities acted with genocidal intent”.
In August, President Cyril Ramaphosa gave an indication of how the government intends to prove its case before the court. He said: “We will be submitting not only video proof, photographic proof, but also great witness to our assertion that a genocide is unfolding and underway in Gaza.
The memorial submission will be the culmination of painstaking work that had lawyers sifting through mounting evidence. It follows an earlier approach, in December, to have the world’s top court halt Israel’s invasion.
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Picture: Robin Van Lonkhuijsen/ ANP MAG / ANP via AFP
