MIDDLE EAST CRISIS: Gaza genocide: SA boosts ICJ case while analysts blast government’s Israel coal sales ‘hypocrisy’

Following South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) several years ago, arguing that it believes Israel is committing genocide, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) has submitted a new dossier of information to assist the ICJ’s Committee of Judges responsible for monitoring the implementation of the provisional measures.The ICJ has issued three legally binding provisional measures orders against Israel that seek to protect the Palestinian people’s rights under the Genocide Convention.These provisional measures followed their conclusion that there was “a real and imminent risk that irreparable prejudice would be caused to the rights of Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from genocide”.Dirco said at the end of August that the “dossier was submitted pursuant to Article 11 of the ICJ’s rules concerning Internal Judicial Practice, which provides that such a committee ‘shall examine information supplied by the parties in relation of provisional measures’. “As of August 2026, at least 73,407 Palestinians have been killed and 174,335 injured in Gaza since 7 October 2023: over 10% of the Palestinian population in Gaza. A total of 46,000 of the surviving Palestinians in Gaza, including children, are estimated to live with severe conflict-related injuries, including amputations, traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries,” it said.The department added that since the announcement of the so-called ceasefire, on average, one Palestinian child has been killed every day by the Israeli military.“Palestinian miscarriage rates in Gaza have increased more than threefold in 2026. Surviving Palestinians in Gaza are further traumatised, herded into an ever-shrinking sliver of territory and subjected to unbearable conditions of life. They are deprived of water, adequate healthcare and medicine, and other essential resources for survival,” it added.The department is further arguing that Israel has not complied with the ICJ provisional orders. Amnesty International has said, “Israel’s failure to comply with the provisional measures ordered by the court undermines their protective function and entails further destruction of the Palestinian group.” “The provisional measures were not only ordered to protect the rights of the Palestinian people under the Genocide Convention, they also safeguard the administration of justice and the legitimacy of the ICJ itself, by ensuring that the rights the court is called upon to vindicate are not destroyed before it renders its final decision,” it added.Orders ignoredSteven Friedman (Photo: Supplied) Professor Steven Friedman, a researcher from the University of Johannesburg, explained in an interview with Daily Maverick that the ICJ’s three provisional orders differ from South Africa’s original genocide case.“No serious scholar of genocide hasn’t concluded that Israel is committing genocide. While proving genocide needs proof of intent, this isn’t difficult in this case because there are tonnes of statements by Israeli cabinet ministers saying precisely what they intended to do,” Friedman said.“However, that is separate from the current dossiers sent by the South African foreign ministry to the ICJ requesting the issuance of interim orders to protect Palestinians in Gaza as well as another submission which asked whether the West Bank and Gaza are illegally occupied by Israel.”The ICJ subsequently confirmed Israel’s illegal occupation of both the Palestinian territories.“The issue is that the ICJ, which is meant to ensure that states around the world play by a certain set of rules, is being ignored so Dirco argued for a widening of their provisional orders,” said Friedman.If states ignore ICJ orders, only the UN Security Council can take punitive measures, but this would never happen because the US would veto any such resolution, he added.“What normally happens is that these court rulings are politically important because they are a means of increasing pressure on states that are breaking international law.“That is what the object of the exercise is, because everybody knows that the current American administration will not change its mind, so the purpose is to try and influence citizens’ opinions around the world so that they will demand their governments change their policies.”Gross violations of lawMiddle East analyst Na’eem Jeenah, a senior researcher at the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, said he believed the additional dossiers, however, strengthened South Africa’s original genocide case. “The bigger issue is that the latest submission is laying a basis on which to argue that Israel is in gross violation and repeated violations of international law as it continues to ignore the ICJ’s provisional measures,” Jeenah told Daily Maverick. “Two years later, following the ICJ issuing the provisional orders, Israel refuses to abide by international law. Moving forward this could set the basis for further political moves against Israel.Palestinians carry the coffin of one of two Palestinian men who were killed in an overnight attack by Israeli settlers during a funeral in the village of Deir Jarir, northeast of Ramallah, 20 July 2026. The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinian men after a group of Israeli settlers attacked a village in the occupied West Bank overnight. EPA/ALAA BADARNEH “The growing settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank is also contributing to increased international pressure. The UK, Ireland and the Netherlands have passed legislation to ban Israeli settlement products.“People are watching Palestinian families there being besieged by Israeli settlers and kicked off their land, so tolerance for these kinds of incidents is decreasing all the time,” Jeenah said.He explained that international pressure on Israel would continue and increase, certainly from within Europe. “The culmination of this could be a motion in the United Nations for strong measures against Israel and the ICJ case is part of that build-up to hold Israel to account for its violations.”Both analysts agreed that there were parallels with pressure exerted on apartheid South Africa by Western governments following similar pressure exerted on them by their respective domestic constituencies.Global outrage against apartheid grew following the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 despite powerful Western governments continuing to support the apartheid authorities, arguing they were against communism, said Friedman. The US State Department only took Nelson Mandela off its “terrorist” list in 2008, while successive UK governments solidly backed South Africa until domestic backlash became too strong.Coal hypocrisyAnti Israel coal export demonstration in Pretoria Furthermore, Jeenah and Friedman also lambasted the hypocrisy of the South African government that while taking Israel to the ICJ it has continued to be Israel’s biggest supplier of coal.“The government puts into place regulations regarding other major issues, so if they believe there is a genocide taking place and are appealing to the convention that says you should prevent genocide then supplying coal to a genocidal state is in itself a violation of that convention,” Friedman said.Jeenah added: “In Dirco’s latest statement they made the point that all member states and signatories to the Genocide Convention have a responsibility to prevent genocide from taking place.“On the one hand we have the genocide case and the ongoing submissions. But it’s very clear coal fuels the genocide, it provides energy for Israel’s armed forces to operate, it provides energy to the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, for the AI systems that target civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. South Africa’s duplicity around this is very problematic. “Claiming that the sale of coal is a private sector issue which has nothing to do with the government is ludicrous.”While South African coal sales to Israel are a small percentage of its overall coal exports they are nevertheless the major portion of Israel’s coal imports. DM