APA-Pretoria (South Africa) South Africa has made an urgent appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to intervene in Israel’s planned ground assault on Rafah in southern Gaza.
Presidential spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said late Tuesday that the South African government was “gravely concerned that the unprecedented military offensive against Rafah, as announced by the State of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large scale killing, harm and destruction.”
“This would be in serious and irreparable breach both of the Genocide Convention and of the Court’s Order of 26 January 2024,” Magwenya said in a statement.
He said South Africa had made an urgent request to the ICJ on Monday to consider whether Israel’s decision to extend its military operations in Rafah required that the court use its power to prevent further breaches of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.
South Africa filed an application at the ICJ at the end of December 2023 in which it accused Israel of genocide in its war on Gaza and sought the court’s intervention to halt the military invasion of the Palestinian enclave by the Jewish state.
The court ordered Israel to stop killing and harming people in Gaza and that it reports provisional measures to the Court within a month.
Magwenya said South Africa “trusts this matter will receive the necessary urgency in light of the daily death toll in Gaza.”
The Israeli offensive on Gaza has killed around 30,000 Palestinian civilians since October last year. The offensive was in response to an earlier attack by Hamas militia on Israel on October 7.
South Africa’s move came as US Central Intelligence Agency director William Burns, Israeli spy chief David Barnea and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani met Egyptian officials in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss a truce in Gaza.
JN/APA