South Africa's filings with the ICJ are of particular importance in light of the UN Security Council/ICC’s inaction and double standards, as the profound Israeli-centric US-led hypocrisy makes a mockery of the United Nations and the international justice system.
On the weekend before Christmas, "Israel" announced the loss of 17 of its soldiersduring a 24-hour period. Avenging its loss on the battlefield, Israeli jets leveled residential neighborhoods in three refugee camps (Maghazi, Bureij and Nuseirat) killing 250 civilians and injuring dozens more.
In the last 90 days, the massacring of civilians has become a familiar scene in Gaza. Whenever the Israeli army faces significant losses, it resorts to reprisal attacks on easy civilian targets. The Israeli terrorizing of civilians serves a dual purpose: Firstly, to placate the innate vengeful sentiments within the Israeli public by creating illusive victories, and secondly, to inflict pain and suffering upon innocent Palestinians. Contrary to its claims, "Israel" intentionally directs its military efforts towards non-combatants as part of its military objectives, and not because fighters are supposedly embedded among civilians. How else can it justify dropping 2000-pound bombs on homes in the middle of the most densely populated refugee camps? The first time in history these bunker busters are used on civilian homes. All "Israel" needs to sanction its war crimes is just to claim that people were warned to evacuate days before, or that there was a high-value target.
Over the last three months, a staggering 22,000 civilians have been killed. This figure doesn't account for an estimated 7,000 individuals who remain trapped beneath rubble, nearly 5,000 of whom are women and children. The Israeli aggression has also led to the displacement of two million or 85% of the population, with many experiencing multiple displacements. Furthermore, according to the Wall Street Journal more than 300,000, or 70% of the homes, and 50% of the buildings in Gaza have "been damaged or destroyed". Even if "Israel" ceased its genocidal war immediately, a heartbreaking reality emerges as one and a half million individuals would not have homes to return to.
Hospitals face a dire situation, grappling with destruction, siege, and inadequate medical supplies to save the injured. Gemma Connell from the UN humanitarian agency OCHA described to the BBC the chaotic state at Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza as "absolute carnage" and the medical facility being "absolutely overloaded."
In response to this human catastrophe, and in a rare move on December 6, 2023, the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, invoked Article 99 of the United Nations Charter. He characterized the situation in Gaza as being "at a breaking point, [and] the situation is simply becoming untenable." He urgently called upon the Security Council to intervene before the complete breakdown of "the humanitarian support system in Gaza." Guterres also addressed the loss of over 130 UN employees, highlighting the extreme circumstances by pointing out that some UN staff members "take their children to work so they know they will live or die together."
Notwithstanding the UN Chief’s warning, the US veto stood alone to block the collaborative international efforts to put an end to the humanitarian disaster in Gaza. Sadly, the US imperial global hegemony has been transformed into a Zionist tool to shield "Israel" from accountability across all UN bodies, including the ongoing International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of Israeli war crimes in Palestine.
Shortly after the State of Palestine became a member of the ICC in January 2015, it formally requested the ICC to investigate Israeli crimes in the 2014 attacks on Gaza and violations of the Geneva Convention in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. At that time, the ICC Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, launched the investigation with an assurance to conclude it within "due time," before she modified her statement, citing challenges such as limited resources, and the heavy workload for prosecutors. She later added the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, even though the initial ICC investigation had commenced four years before the onset of the coronavirus.
After five years of thorough investigations, the former prosecutor wrote that she was "satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip." However, in contrast to a previous Court case against Sudan, where arrest warrants were issued against specific individuals, Bensouda left the office at the end of her term in 2021 without filing charges against individual Israelis accused of said "war crimes."
In a recent press conference held in Cairo on November 17, the current ICC Prosecutor, Karim A. A. Khan, asserted that since taking office in June 2021, he has diligently pursued the investigations initiated by his predecessor. However, mirroring the stance of the former prosecutor, Khan conveyed to his audience that for the past two years, he has "been calling, requesting, pleading for additional resources."
It is noteworthy that the same Prosecutor appeared to have had no impediments in terms of time and resources when he promptly initiated an investigation on February 25, 2022, merely one day after the start of the Russia/Ukraine war. By February 28, Khan announced his intention to launch a comprehensive ICC investigation of Russian war crimes. At the time, the number of reported civilian deaths in Ukraine stood at 379.