SA puts one over its snide critics in the West

There wasn’t much comfort for Israel on Friday after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered an interim ruling in a case brought by South Africa alleging the Israelis are flirting with genocide in their war on the Hamas militia in Gaza.

At best it could have been worse. The court could have demanded a ceasefire, as the South Africans had requested, but it didn’t. That allowed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to boast minutes later that Pretoria’s “vile attempt to deny Israel [this right to defend itself] is rightly rejected.”

But it was South Africa’s day as it blasted away the snide early responses from most Western capitals when it first launched its case in December. The US National Security Council’s John Kirby, first called the SA case “meritless”. UK foreign secretary David Cameron said it was “nonsense”.

By a huge majority on Friday, the 17 judges of the UN’s highest court respectfully disagreed. They supported the South African view that there is prima facie evidence that genocide could be afoot in Gaza. They ordered Israel to “take all measures” to prevent breaches of the genocide convention, including, killing, causing mental or physical harm or inflicting impossible conditions on the people of Gaza.

Like it or not, a legitimate court has put Israel on notice that, less than a century after Jews were subject to the worst genocide in history, the state created for them as a refuge after World War 2 is now going to be investigated for genocide, or genocidal intent, itself.

Israel will have to watch its conduct very carefully. It has to allow far greater supplies of aid into Gaza, has to make sure any evidence of possible genocidal activity is not destroyed and it has to report back to the court in one month on what it has done to give effect to the orders.

It was interesting to watch the immediate media response. “ICJ rules in favour of SA” ran a strip on the local Newzroom Afrika screen. The New York Times went with “UN Court Declines to Demand That Israel Stop Its Military Campaign”.

In a way, both are right but it would be silly not to acknowledge the scale of the South African success. President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country had been vindicated by the ruling and in a real sense, he was right, even though the requested ceasefire order wasn’t forthcoming. Naledi Pandor, international affairs minister, said it was impossible to see how the other orders could be complied with without a ceasefire.

Others argue she is being too literal, that Israel was not ordered to stop its war. The debate will go on endlessy - genocide is a war crime but are all war crimes genocidal?

The ICJ will take the Israeli report in a month and allow the South Africans to comment on it. The pressure on Netanyahu and his Western allies is only going to intensify. They lost, badly, on Friday and they need to accept that.

Measured in purely political terms, Ramaphosa, and indeed the ANC, have been given the juiciest possible bone ahead of the coming elections here. Mired deep in domestic policy failure, The Hague victory will lift party spirits and paint Ramaphosa in warm new colours at home and abroad.

There is no way they walk away from this rewarding process now and angry efforts to stick South Africa as an Iranian or Hamas proxy in response to the court action are not going to travel well in the absence of actual evidence. The South African legal team clearly impressed the court and is strong enough to ratchet the issue higher, should it want to.

Israel, provoked by the vicious Hamas attacks and murder of more than 1,200 citizens on October 7, has vastly overreacted and killed about 25,000 people in Gaza, up to half of them children, in retaliation.

The Israelis insist their aim is the destruction of Hamas but the way to kill them off is to remove the thing that gives them legitimacy in the first place. For the Israelis that would mean sitting down to plan a two-state solution so that Palestinians finally have a decent home. That’s not going to happen though. Part of the problem for Netanyahu is that even a flicker of diplomacy in that direction is politically impossible. He is trapped by far-right extremists in his coalition government. Turn on them and he faces almost certain political ruin. So the war will go on.

But the two-state solution is the only solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Without it there’s no rest for the world.

It was South Africa’s day as it blasted away the snide initial responses from most Western capitals when it first launched its case in December