SA to file memorial with ICJ in genocide case against Israel [VIDEO]

As Israel continues to bomb Gaza amid the rising death toll, South Africa’s legal team is ready to present evidence, facts and arguments in a memorial before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Monday in its case that Israel is committing genocide in Palestine.

South Africa is seeking to halt its military assault on the enclave, pending the court’s final decision on whether Israel is perpetrating genocide.

Watch Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hackled by victims’ families

Memorial

After the memorial has been filed, Israel will need to file a counter-memorial. A deadline of 28 July 2025 has been announced for this.

South Africa filed its 84-page application at the ICJ – the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN) – on 29 December 2023, accusing Israel of genocide in the war in Gaza.

South Africa has since been successful in three attempts to the ICJ to order interim measures to halt Israel’s attacks on the occupied territory.

South Africa confident

As the death toll from Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza approaches 43,000, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is “shocked by harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction” in north Gaza.

“The plight of Palestinian civilians trapped in North Gaza is unbearable,” Guterres’s spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said.

At least 100 hostages are still believed to be in captivity in Gaza after the attack on 7 October.

In August, President Cyril Ramaphosa said he was confident that South Africa would prove that Israel is committing genocide against the people of Palestine.

“As the honourable member knows we have continued to take action at the International Court of Justice, having initiated the action last year. We have continued to approach that court with further pleas and submissions to the court to make further rulings and to tighten up what they ruled in our favour last year.”

ALSO READ: Ramaphosa confident SA will convince ICJ Israel is committing genocide [VIDEO]

Support for SA

Ramaphosa said South Africa has also received support from other countries in its case against Israel. 

“We’ve been fortunate to be joined by a number of other countries that have voiced and articulated their support for the case that South Africa initiated. We are now in the process of preparing almost a 500-page case which will be presented to the court, where we will be taking steps to prove that what we had approached the court on last year is the reality that Palestinians are living under.

“We will be submitting not only video proof, photographic proof, but also great witness to our assertion that a genocide is unfolding and underway in Gaza, and all this, as the honourable member would know, is being done to not only support the people of Palestine, but to ensure that we live up to our own values and principles of respect for human rights and for justice,” Ramaphosa said.

ICJ orders

In January, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) determined that genocidal attacks may be occurring in Gaza and ordered Israel to take measures to prevent genocide against Palestinians in the region.

However, Israel refused to comply with the court’s order, and its attacks on Gaza continued, causing the civilian death toll and destruction of infrastructure to rise rapidly.

In March, the ICJ again concurred with South Africa’s assertion that the situation in Gaza has deteriorated significantly since the initial order on 26 January, which Israel has failed to comply with.

Israel defiant

The UN’s top court granted South Africa’s urgent request to enforce additional emergency measures against Israel, accusing it of violating existing orders and causing irreparable harm to the rights invoked by Pretoria under the 1948 Genocide Convention concerning the ongoing siege of Gaza. Despite this, Israel continued.

In May, the ICJ ordered Israel to immediately cease its attacks in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. This decision marked the third time this year that the 15-judge panel has issued preliminary orders aimed at curbing the death toll and alleviating humanitarian suffering in Gaza.

Netanyahu hackled

Meanwhile, bereaved families interrupted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday.

Netanyahu was speaking at a ceremony in memory of victims of the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

The relatives shouted that their family members were killed, while others shouted: “Shame on you!”.

Netanyahu paused his speech until the families of the victims who blamed the Israeli government for failures that enabled Hamas to carry out the attacks were removed from the gathering.

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