ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE CASE AT ICJ

The main gist of South Africa’s (SA) case was that Israel had committed genocidal acts in Gaza with genocidal intent.

South Africa set out to prove that this intent is evidenced both by a pattern of conduct and by a genocidal speech by political and military leaders, including soldiers on the ground. SA also set out to prove that Israel, as a State, has also failed to prevent and punish incitement of clear genocide.

What is genocide?

In my attempt to answer this question, I took an extract from the Times of Israel newspaper, which reads as follows: The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, defines the crime as acts ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’. It lists the acts as killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births, and forcibly transferring children from their biological parents or legal guardians. We will briefly step back in history and recap, in an attempt to see briefly what the 17 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) faced in giving their judgment.

 Question of Palestine land

As has been stated in earlier articles, the ‘Children of Israel’ (biblically speaking) had been scattered across the world with no State of their own for more than 2 000 years. Numerous Bible verses predict the scattering of the ‘Children of Israel’.  Their original home, where Jerusalem stood, belonged to the Arabs and was called Palestine. Ninety per cent of the population of Palestine was now of Arab descent and as little as 10 per cent of Jewish descent. The British had made it part of its empire, ruling it as one of its territories.  

What was Balfour Declaration?

On November 2, 1917, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour, wrote a 67-word letter addressed to Lionel Walter Rothschild, a figurehead of the British Jewish community. The letter committed the British Government to ‘the establishment, in Palestine, of a national home for the Jewish people’ and to facilitate ‘the achievement of this object’. The letter is known as the Balfour Declaration. In essence, a European colonial power promised the Zionist movement a country where Palestinian Arab natives made up more than 90 per cent of the population.

A British colonial mandate was created in 1923 and lasted until 1948. During that period, the British facilitated mass Jewish immigration – many of the new residents were fleeing Nazism in Europe – and they also faced protests and strikes. The fact was that the British had experienced first-hand the atrocities of the two world wars and the genocide committed against the Jewish people. It was this very genocide that prompted the United Nations to officially call genocide a crime against humanity. However, this move by the European powers left the Palestinians who were living in Palestine alarmed by their country’s changing demographics and British confiscation of their lands to be handed over to Jewish settlers. This was the beginning of the conflict we see today.

1948 Nakba or ethnic cleansing of Palestine

Even before the British mandate expired on May 14, 1948, Israeli paramilitaries were already embarking on a military operation to destroy Palestinian towns and villages to expand the borders of the State of Israel that was to be born. In April 1948, more than 100 Palestinian men, women and children were killed in the village of Deir Yassin, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. That set the tone for the rest of the operation, and from 1947 to 1949, more than 500 Palestinian villages, towns and cities were destroyed in what Palestinians refer to as the Nakba or ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic. It is alleged that an estimated 15 000 Palestinians were killed, including in dozens of massacres. The Zionist movement captured 78 per cent of historic Palestine. The remaining 22 per cent was divided into what are now the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip. An estimated 750 000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes then and now millions are displaced. The collective punishment by the Israeli military has continued for terrorist acts committed by Hamas, PLO or any other. All human rights were suspended over decades and strict apartheid laws were imposed on all of Palestine to this day.   

Israel has case to answer on genocide

The ICJ has found that it is ‘plausible’ that Israel has committed acts that violate the genocide convention. In a provisional order delivered by the court’s President, Judge Joan Donoghue, the court said Israel must ensure, ‘with immediate effect’, that its forces do not commit any of the acts prohibited by the convention. Donoghue said the court cannot make a final determination right now on whether Israel is guilty of genocide. But she said that given the deteriorating situation in Gaza, the court has jurisdiction to order measures to protect Gaza’s population from further risk of genocide. Judge Donoghue outlined the provisional measures and how each of the 17 judges voted. The court voted 15-2 on the order that Israel must take all measures in its power to stop anything in relation to genocide in Gaza. By 16 votes to 1, the court voted that Israel needs to take all measures within its powers to prevent and punish those involved with inciting genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

No order for ceasefire

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only welcomed the ICJ’s decision not to order a ceasefire but rejected the claim of genocide as ‘outrageous’ and said Israel would continue to defend itself; effectively calling the ruling ridiculous and that nothing will change. This perhaps tells us why the ICJ decided not to order a ceasefire that was not enforceable. Israel has put the reputation of the ICJ on the line accusing some UN agencies of supporting Hamas during the October 7 2023 Jewish massacre. Comment septembereswatini@gmail.com

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: