Pretoria submitted the dossier on 25 August, as announced on 28 August by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (South Africa's foreign ministry), arguing that Israel had failed to comply with three sets of court-ordered provisional measures issued since January 2024 to assist an internal ICJ committee tasked with monitoring compliance and recommending judicial action.
The move once again places Israel’s conduct before the world’s highest court after nearly three years of mass killing, destruction, and deprivation in Gaza, and after repeated judicial orders requiring Israel to prevent acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention and ensure the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian assistance.
South Africa said Israel had failed to comply with the court’s orders, accusing it of continuing to subject Palestinians to intolerable conditions of life, including deprivation of adequate water, health care, medicines and other essentials necessary for survival.
Flaunting the ceasefire
The filing comes as Israeli attacks continue despite the US-backed ceasefire that took effect in October 2025. On Monday, Israeli airstrikes killed at least five Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health officials. Two were killed in a strike near a municipal park in Gaza City crowded with displaced families, while another strike on a vehicle in the Tel Al-Hawa area killed three.
The Gaza health ministry’s latest aggregate figures, issued before Monday’s attacks, put the Palestinian death toll since 7 October 2023 at 73,454, with 174,486 people wounded. The ministry said 1,318 Palestinians had been killed and 4,375 injured since the 11 October 2025 ceasefire, while another 815 bodies had been recovered from beneath the rubble.
Although the ceasefire has slowed the rate at which Israel is killing Palestinians, it has plainly failed to end Israel’s lethal attacks on the Gaza Strip. At the height of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, the UN reported that more than 240 Palestinians were being killed each day on average during the first 100 days. By August 2024, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights estimated that about 130 Palestinians had been killed each day on average over the preceding 10 months, while the killing continued into 2025, with the UN reporting that more than 100 Palestinians were still being killed every day in July.
Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar, acting as mediators, have repeatedly condemned Israeli attacks and violations of the ceasefire. In a joint statement on 20 August, they warned that intensified Israeli attacks were undermining diplomatic efforts and demanded that Israel comply fully with its obligations under the agreement. Earlier that month, the three states said continuing Israeli violations constituted a breach of the ceasefire and a flagrant violation of international and humanitarian law.
The humanitarian catastrophe produced by Israel’s war and blockade also remains far from over. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on 28 August that restrictions and delays affecting the entry of health supplies were continuing to undermine medical care, while Israeli access restrictions and shortages were obstructing preparations for the coming rainy season.
Karam Abu Salem remained the only operational cargo crossing, while humanitarian agencies continued to report restrictions on equipment, shelter materials, spare parts, and other supplies essential to rebuilding even the most basic civilian infrastructure.
UN officials have also reported that restrictions on heavy machinery, spare parts, and other critical equipment are preventing the large-scale removal of rubble and recovery of bodies, while Israeli access restrictions remain in force across extensive areas of Gaza. Nearly 94 percent of the territory’s 2.1 million residents require shelter assistance, according to humanitarian agencies.
File Photo: A woman cries while sitting on the rubble of her house, destroyed in an Israeli strike, in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza Strip. AFP
ICJ case against Tel Aviv
Those conditions go directly to the substance of the legally binding measures imposed on Israel since early 2024. In its first provisional-measures order on 26 January 2024, the ICJ required Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent acts listed under Article II of the Genocide Convention against Palestinians in Gaza, including killing members of the group, 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, and imposing measures intended to prevent births. The court also ordered Israel to ensure that its military did not commit such acts, with the provisional measures carrying binding legal force.
As the humanitarian catastrophe deepened and the court warned that “famine is setting in,” the ICJ went further on 28 March 2024, unanimously ordering Israel to ensure, without delay and in full cooperation with the United Nations, the unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed food, water, electricity, fuel, shelter, clothing, hygiene and sanitation supplies, medical supplies, and medical care throughout Gaza. It also ordered Israel to ensure that its military did not obstruct the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian assistance, yet the humanitarian conditions that prompted the order continued to deteriorate.
On 24 May 2024, as Israeli occupation forces intensified their assault on Rafah, the court reaffirmed its previous measures and directed Israel to immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in the Rafah Governorate insofar as they could inflict conditions of life capable of bringing about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, in whole or in part. The court also ordered Israel to keep the Rafah crossing open for humanitarian assistance at scale and to ensure access for UN-mandated investigative bodies examining allegations of genocide.
Israeli occupation forces nevertheless pressed ahead with the assault on Rafah, despite the ICJ order and a US “red line” set by then-President Joseph Biden, forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and deepening the catastrophe in an area where more than a million people had sought refuge after being driven from elsewhere in Gaza.
File photo: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) logo is seen in The Hague, the Netherlands. AFP
Too much evidence
South Africa’s latest dossier therefore comes against an already extensive legal and evidentiary record, following repeated ICJ intervention, repeated warnings from UN bodies, and years of documentation by international and Israeli human-rights organizations whose investigations have concluded that Israel’s conduct met, or was consistent with, the legal characteristics of genocide.
The most consequential finding came in September 2025, when the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel concluded that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
After a two-year investigation, the commission found that Israeli authorities and occupation forces had committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the Genocide Convention: killing members of the protected group; causing serious bodily or mental harm; deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction; and imposing measures intended to prevent births.
It further found that statements by Israeli civilian and military officials at the highest levels, combined with the pattern of conduct by Israeli occupation forces, demonstrated genocidal intent. The commission concluded that Israel was responsible for committing genocide, failing to prevent genocide, and failing to punish its perpetrators.
That conclusion followed an increasingly grave body of findings by UN investigators and human-rights organizations. In November 2024, the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices concluded that Israel’s methods of warfare in Gaza were consistent with the characteristics of genocide, citing mass civilian casualties, the deliberate imposition of life-threatening conditions, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war.
Amnesty International went further in December 2024, concluding that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Its investigation examined mass killing, serious physical and psychological harm, the destruction of civilian infrastructure, forced displacement, restrictions on power, and the obstruction or denial of life-saving food, water, medicine, and humanitarian assistance.
Human Rights Watch, in a separate December 2024 investigation, found that Israeli authorities had deliberately deprived Palestinians in Gaza of adequate water. It concluded that the policy amounted to the crime against humanity of extermination and to acts of genocide under the Genocide Convention, finding that Israeli authorities had intentionally inflicted life-threatening conditions on Gaza’s population.
The conclusion that Israel’s campaign constituted genocide has also come from prominent organizations within Israel. In July 2025, B’Tselem concluded that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza, citing mass killing, severe bodily and psychological harm, destruction of basic infrastructure, forced displacement, and the deliberate creation of conditions incapable of sustaining Palestinian society.
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel reached a parallel conclusion, finding that the systematic destruction of Gaza’s health care system and the wider destruction of conditions necessary for human survival constituted genocide.
Although the ICJ itself has not yet issued a final judgment on whether Israel has violated the Genocide Convention, that distinction, however, does not erase the conclusions already reached by the UN Commission of Inquiry, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, and other organizations, nor does it diminish Israel’s binding obligation to comply with the provisional measures while the proceedings continue.
File Photo: Israeli soldiers detain blindfolded Palestinian men in a military truck in the Zeitoun district of the southern part of the Gaza Strip. AFP
Starving a people
The consequences of Israel’s restrictions on food, water, and humanitarian assistance are similarly well documented. On 2 March 2025, Israeli authorities halted the entry of humanitarian and commercial supplies into Gaza. OCHA reported that all crossings were closed to incoming cargo and that the blockade rapidly crippled humanitarian operations, slashing food distribution and threatening community kitchens and other life-saving services.
The full blockade continued for 11 weeks before Israel allowed limited aid deliveries to resume in May. By August 2025, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification formally confirmed famine in Gaza Governorate, with more than half a million Palestinians facing catastrophic conditions characterized by starvation, destitution, and death, while famine was projected to spread further without urgent intervention.
Conditions improved after the October 2025 ceasefire and the scaling-up of humanitarian assistance, meaning Gaza is no longer currently classified as being in famine, but that improvement should not be mistaken for recovery. The IPC reported in July 2026 that more than 1.2 million people were still experiencing Crisis-level or worse acute food insecurity, while more than 1.4 million, roughly two-thirds of Gaza’s population, were projected to face such conditions between July and December. The agency warned that these gains remained fragile and dependent on sustained humanitarian access.
File Photo: Palestinians shove to receive a hot meal from a charity kitchen in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. AFP
What now?
South Africa’s genocide case itself remains pending. Pretoria instituted proceedings against Israel on 29 December 2023, accusing it of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. Israel filed its Counter-Memorial (its formal written legal defence) on 12 March 2026, following a series of extensions. In May 2026, the court set 22 November 2027 as the deadline for South Africa’s Reply (its written counter-argument to the defence) and 22 May 2029 for Israel’s Rejoinder (its final written response closing the written phase).
The proceedings have also attracted an extraordinary number of interventions from other states. Eighteen states and the State of Palestine have filed declarations advancing positions aligned with South Africa’s case, which accuses Israel of violating the Genocide Convention through its treatment of Palestinians in Gaza. They are Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, Chile, the Maldives, Bolivia, Ireland, Cuba, Belize, Brazil, the Comoros, Belgium, the Netherlands, Iceland, Namibia, and the State of Palestine.
The latest wave came in March 2026, when the Netherlands and Iceland filed their declarations on 11 March, followed by Namibia on 12 March. On the same day, the United States, Hungary, and Fiji filed declarations advancing positions aligned with Israel, while Paraguay filed its declaration on 3 March.
South Africa’s August dossier now places Israel’s non-compliance squarely before the ICJ’s judges. Pretoria’s submission asks the court to confront the widening gulf between its binding orders and conditions on the ground, which have run parallel to an escalating Palestinian death toll and the widespread destruction of Gaza's civilian infrastructure.
Israel has repeatedly been ordered to protect Palestinians’ rights under the Genocide Convention, yet South Africa’s latest filing provides mounting evidence that these mandates have been persistently disregarded as the killing, deprivation, and destruction continue unabated.
The central question now facing the court is not whether its provisional measures are legally binding, which they are, but how the UN's highest judicial organ will respond when a state accused of genocide defies its orders while the population under protection continues to be displaced, injured, and killed.
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