Last week, the Republic of South Africa’s Ambassador to the Netherlands Vusi Madonsela submitted his country’s evidence to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) documenting Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.

The evidence, presented on 28 October, is over 750 pages long, with over 4,000 pages of forensic evidence, exhibits, and annexes describing Israel’s actions as the most well-documented genocide in history.

The South African legal team said their biggest issue with preparing the case was “too much evidence” in the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa vs. Israel).

In accordance with the rules of the court, the dossier may not be made public.

A statement by South Africa’s presidency said that the filing of the documents was taking place “at a time when Israel is intensifying the killing of civilians in Gaza and now seems intent to follow a similar path of destruction in Lebanon.”

“The glaring genocide in Gaza is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see,” the statement said.   

Israel’s devastating war on Gaza since October 2023 has killed at least 43,000 Palestinians and destroyed, through unprecedented bombing in recent history, much of the small enclave.

There has been intense targeting of hospitals and the prevention of the entry of basic humanitarian assistance resulting in widespread famine. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says that Israel has killed six per cent of Gaza’s population of 2.2 million.

Israel has also expanded its war on Lebanon since the first week of October, bombing its southern towns and parts of the capital Beirut.

South Africa instituted proceedings against Israel with the ICJ on 29 December 2023, which were accepted by the world court after it found merit in the accusations, dismissing Israel’s efforts to have them rejected.

Because such cases often take years before they are concluded, South Africa presented the ICJ with a series of restraining orders, known as provisional measures, for Israel to stop the war and allow the entry of essential humanitarian and medical assistance.

The process took months of back and forth between the court and South Africa, resulting in the court obliging Israel to adhere to a series of provisional measures to that effect – none of which was adhered to.

The court’s verdicts and opinions are mandatory and cannot be repealed, but the ICJ has no means to enforce them. Their political and legal impact, however, carry significant weight that could have serious repercussions on the ground.

Craig Mokhiber, former director in the New York Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), who resigned from his position to protest the UN’s failure to halt Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, said that South Africa’s submission is “another historic milestone in the struggle to end Israeli impunity”.

Spain, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine, Turkey, Chile, the Maldives and Bolivia have officially requested to join South Africa in the case against Israel but still await the ICJ’s approval.

The Memorial – the name of the document recording the main case of South Africa against Israel – contains evidence that shows Israel has violated the Genocide Convention by promoting the destruction of Palestinians living in Gaza, physically killing them with an assortment of destructive weapons, depriving them of access to humanitarian assistance, causing conditions of life that are aimed at their physical destruction, ignoring and defying several provisional measures of the ICJ, and using starvation as a weapon of war and to further Israel’s aims to depopulate Gaza through mass death and the forced displacement of Palestinians.

“The evidence will show that undergirding Israel’s genocidal acts is the special intent to commit genocide,” the statement said, “a failure by Israel to prevent incitement to genocide, to prevent genocide itself, and a failure to punish those inciting and committing acts of genocide.”

South Africa’s Memorial is a reminder to the international community to remember the people of Palestine, to stand in solidarity with them, and to stop the catastrophe in Gaza, it added.

“The devastation and suffering have been possible because despite the ICJ and numerous UN bodies’ actions and interventions, Israel has failed to comply with its international obligations,” it said.

South Africa said that the actions it had taken, joined by other states, are primarily aimed to stop the genocide in Palestine peacefully, through holding Israel accountable in the institutions set up for this very purpose by the United Nations.

“Israel has been granted unprecedented impunity to breach international law and norms for as long as the UN Charter has been in existence. Israel’s continued shredding of international law has imperiled the institutions of global governance that were established to hold all states accountable,” South Africa said.

South Africa’s case and the attention it has received from global audiences has opened other possibilities to hold Israel’s allies accountable for assisting its war on Palestinians.

On 1 March, Nicaragua instituted proceedings against Germany for alleged breaches of its international obligations for supporting Israel’s war on the Palestinians, citing, among other evidence, the remarks of Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who said that “Israel’s security is a German raison d’Etat.”

Nicaragua sought the indication of provisional measures of protection, including the resumption of suspended German funding of the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and the cessation of military supplies to Israel. The court ruled against these provisional measures in April.

In July, the ICJ gave its advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory including in East Jerusalem, which it deemed illegal and in violation of international law and amounting to apartheid.

The court stated that Israel is obliged to end its unlawful presence in all the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible and to make reparation for the damage it has caused to Palestinians throughout the duration of its occupation.

The advisory opinion was in response to a request by the UN General Assembly that was adopted in December 2022. The court held a series of public hearings in which 54 states participated in oral and written proceedings from 19 to 26 February.

On the same day South Africa submitted its Memorial to the ICJ on 28 October, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967 Francesca Albanese published her report “Genocide as Colonial Erasure.”

Forensic Architecture, a prestigious University of London-based research group, has also published an 827-page cartographic analysis of the genocide in support of South Africa’s case at the ICJ.

Shortly after submitting her report, Albanese told a UN committee that it is time to consider suspending Israel’s credentials as a Member State of the UN.

“It is important to call a genocide a genocide,” she said during a briefing on the international legal responsibilities for preventing genocide on 31 October.

“None of you really have clean hands when it comes to human rights, but no other country has maintained an unlawful occupation violating decades of UN Resolutions as Israel has done.”

* A version of this article appears in print in the 7 November, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly