South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor, addresses a news conference in Pretoria, South Africa | Photo: AP
Pretoria: South Africa's foreign minister said Wednesday that Israel has ignored the UN's top court's verdict last week by killing hundreds more people in Gaza in a couple of days.
She also stated that her country has inquired as to why an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been issued in a separate case brought by South Africa at the International Criminal Court.
Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said South Africa would "look at proposing other measures to the global community" in an effort to prevent Israel from killing civilians during its battle in Gaza against Hamas, but did not go into detail, AP reported.
The UN's International Court of Justice issued a preliminary verdict in South Africa's complaint charging Israel with genocide in Gaza, ordering Israel to do everything possible to avert death, damage, and crimes of genocide against Palestinians in the area. It stopped short of ordering a cease-fire. It also ordered Israel to promptly deliver basic humanitarian aid to Gaza and submit a report on efforts made to comply with the verdict within a month.
A senior official in South Africa's foreign ministry has stated that the government hopes that Friday's verdict, and whether Israel complies with it, will be discussed on a broader scale at the United Nations, maybe as early as Wednesday.
Since the verdict, Israel kept up its military offensive, which it claims is intended at Hamas, killing hundreds more Palestinians, according to estimates from the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The ministry reported Wednesday that 150 Palestinians were killed in the area in the last 24 hours, raising the total number of Palestinian deaths in the war to over 26,700.
The Health Ministry's count makes no distinction between combatants and civilians. According to reports, women and children make up the majority of those killed.
“I can’t be dishonest. I believe the rulings of the court have been ignored,” South Africa’s foreign minister said. “Hundreds of people have been killed in the last three or four days. And clearly Israel believes it has a license to do as it wishes.”
Pandor warned that the world was in danger of doing nothing to stop civilian casualties in Gaza and that such inactivity contributed to the horrendous death toll in Rwanda in 1994 when more than 800,000 people were slaughtered.
“We are allowing this to happen again, right before our eyes, on our TV screens,” Pandor said.
The court's decision is binding on Israel, and the country might face UN sanctions if it is found to be breaking its directives, though any sanctions may be vetoed by its close ally the United States.
Netanyahu has said that Israel “will continue to do what is necessary to defend our country and defend our people.” Israel claims the onslaught is aimed at eradicating Hamas, which carried out strikes on Israel on October 7 that killed over 1,200 people, the majority of whom were civilians.
Israel claims to have followed international law and is working hard to keep civilian casualties in Gaza to an absolute minimum. It claims to have killed over 9,000 militants and accuses Hamas of operating in civilian areas, making it harder to prevent civilian casualties.
South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, has long compared Israel's practices in Gaza and the West Bank to its own past during the apartheid period of white minority rule, which restricted most Black people to "homelands" before ending in 1994.
Pandor also stated that South Africa was eager to pursue the lawsuit it had filed with the separate International Criminal Court, indicating that the government will continue to put judicial pressure on Israel. South Africa accuses Netanyahu of war crimes and requests that the International Criminal Court arrest him.
The ICJ and ICC are both situated in The Hague, although they handle different matters. The International Court of Justice is a United Nations court that resolves disputes between countries. The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutes persons.
A South African delegation met with the ICC court president and prosecutor while in The Hague last week for the ICJ verdict, Pandor stated and stressed “our concern at the slow pace of action on matters that we referred to them as urgent matters.”
South Africa filed a lawsuit against Netanyahu at the ICC in November. The International Criminal Court is the same court that issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin last year for alleged war crimes involving the deportation of children from Ukraine.
“The (ICC) prosecutor assured us the matter is in hand and being looked at by his office,” Pandor said of South Africa’s allegations against Netanyahu. “What I felt he didn’t answer me sufficiently on was, I asked him why he was able to issue an arrest warrant for Mr. Putin while he is unable to do so for the Prime Minister of Israel. He couldn’t answer and didn’t answer that question.”
Israel, like Russia, did not sign the treaty that established the ICC and does not recognise the court's authority.