The court ruled that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories violates international law. (Photo by Selman Aksunger/Anadolu via Getty Images)
President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday welcomed the finding by the United Nations’ highest tribunal that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories violated international law as a sign of shifting sentiment on Israeli policy.
“What this latest ruling indicates is that international momentum against Israel’s continued violations of the rights of the Palestinian people is growing,” Ramaphosa said in reply to the debate on his opening of parliament address last week.
“Just as our own struggle for national liberation was eventually won with steady victories, so too will the quest for Palestinian statehood be ultimately realised. Our own history and experience demands no less of us.”
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in an advisory opinion on Friday said Israel must withdraw from occupied Palestinian land “as rapidly as possible”, adding that Palestinians were entitled to reparation for unlawful acts.
“The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the occupied Palestinian territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory unlawful,” court president Nawaf Salam said.
Crucially, the court found that other states had a legal obligation not to assist or support the 57-year occupation.
The advisory opinion followed a request by the UN General Assembly in 2022, well before the start of the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza which South Africa considers genocide.
South Africa in its submission to court in February described Palestinian suffering under the occupation as worse than that endured by its black majority during apartheid.
“We as South Africans sense, see, hear and feel to our core the inhumane discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli regime as an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalised against black people in my country,” Pretoria’s ambassador to The Hague, Vusi Madonsela, said.
The court on Friday said Israel was in breach of the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racism.
In a separate case, South Africa has asked the ICJ to declare Israel in breach of the 1948 UN convention on genocide.
As the siege of Gaza continues, the country’s legal team has twice asked the court for additional provisional measures to be added to its interim order on 26 January that Israel must take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts prohibited under the convention.
In May the court, in response to its latest application, ordered Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in the Rafah governorate which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
Although Israel has rejected the court’s pronouncements, South Africa’s legal action is seen as having shifted international opinion on Israel’s retaliation for the 7 October massacres by Hamas in western Israel and contributed to the mounting isolation of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In May, the top prosecutor for the International Criminal Court said he is seeking the arrest of Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, on charges including “starvation”, “wilful killing”, and “extermination and/or murder”.
Ramaphosa said he would later on Monday meet South African lawyers who brought the application to the ICJ to thank them for their work, and said South Africa would never waver in its support for Palestinians’ right to self-determination.
“We will continue to pursue progressive internationalism and advance principled solidarity,” he said.