{"id":132802,"date":"2024-06-06T12:02:01","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/?p=132802"},"modified":"2024-06-06T12:11:08","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:11:08","slug":"why-south-africa-fighting-for-palestine-the-hague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justiceinfo.net\/en\/132802-why-south-africa-fighting-for-palestine-the-hague.html","title":{"rendered":"Why South Africa is fighting for Palestine in The Hague"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cWe know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians,\u201d said Nelson Mandela. At a time when the party he brought to power at the end of apartheid has just lost its absolute majority, these words recall the roots of South Africa\u2019s current commitment to helping Palestine on the international justice stage.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

In the run-up to the elections, there was wide popular support for the South African government\u2019s strategy of legal intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following victories in a case closely followed by South African media. But on May 29, the African National Congress (ANC) lost its absolute majority, winning just 40% of the vote in a disputed election campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The party, which has been in power since Nelson Mandela\u2019s first democratic election to the presidency in 1994, has been unable to secure employment for everyone, with unemployment running at 33%, and 45% among young people. It remains unable to ensure a continuous supply of electricity and unable to curb corruption, perceived by 81% of the population as widespread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Referral to the ICC and ICJ<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

On the judicial front, South Africans welcomed two big pieces of news in the week leading up to the vote. On Monday May 20, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court<\/a> (ICC) requested arrest warrants<\/a> for Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as for three Hamas officials. South Africa made its contribution to the process<\/a> on November 17, when it lodged a complaint with the ICC along with four other states: Bangladesh, Bolivia, Comoros and Djibouti. Based on the referral filed by Palestine in 2018<\/a>, the South African application used the term \u201capartheid\u201d to designate Israel\u2019s occupation policy in the Palestinian territories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four days later, on Friday May 24, the International Court of Justice<\/a> (ICJ) ordered Israel to \u201cimmediately halt its military offensive<\/a>\u201d in Rafah. This decision was the fourth taken by the UN court in The Hague after South Africa initiated proceedings against Israel<\/a> on December 29, 2023, under the Genocide Convention for its action in the Gaza Strip. At South Africa\u2019s request, the ICJ had already demanded on January 26<\/a> that Israel do everything in its power to prevent acts of genocide in the Palestinian enclave and on March 28<\/a> that it allow humanitarian aid in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shared experience of apartheid<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The legal team South Africa sent to the ICJ is headed by professor of international law John Dugard, who has served as an ad hoc judge at the ICJ and as UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories (2001-2009). His team, made up of nine jurists representing all the cultural components of the rainbow nation, is led politically by Vusi Madonsela, South Africa\u2019s ambassador to the Netherlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSouth Africa has referred to the ICJ and the ICC because it thinks it bears a special obligation to its own people and to the international community as a whole to ensure that wherever the egregious and infamous practices of apartheid occur, these must be called out for what they are, and brought to an end immediately,\u201d Madonsela explained at a colloquium in February at the European Parliament in Brussels. \u201cSouth Africans have the direct experience of international solidarity and of the importance of multilateral institutions, particularly the United Nations: our own liberation from a brutal apartheid regime was in large part enabled by the commitment of allies and friends in our struggles within these institutions. In this history, the Palestinians have steadily remained allies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two closely linked liberation movements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe struggle for liberation, for sovereignty, for self-determination of Palestinian people and the liberation movement in South Africa have always been closely twinned,\u201d confirms Nicole Fritz, former director of the Southern African Litigation Centre and the Helen Suzman Foundation, two of southern Africa\u2019s leading human rights NGOs. \u201cFrom the earliest days, there have been an understanding, a recognition of each other, solidarity and support from the early days, until the end of Apartheid.\u201d In 1948, when Palestinians were dispossessed of part of their land following creation of the State of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war, black South Africans were victim the same year of a general policy of expulsion from their land after the accession to power of the National Party, which instituted apartheid. In the 1960s and 1970s, armed struggle was organized in Palestine and South Africa, in the face of oppressive states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn 1977, the 2nd Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions was introduced by the Red Cross to protect the fighters [and the victims] of non-state armies, as a result of advocacy by the ANC and PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization),\u201d observes Fritz. The brutal repression of black teenagers\u2019 revolts in the streets of Soweto from 1976 onwards was followed by that of Palestinian teenagers during the first Intifada in 1987, while the political leaderships of the ANC and PLO were in exile in Lusaka (Zambia) and Tunis (Tunisia) respectively. These repressions, shocking in the eyes of the world, both triggered peace processes in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But only the South African process led to democratic elections in 1994, while the Israeli-Palestinian peace process remained bogged down. In a famous speech<\/a> in Pretoria in 1997, Nelson Mandela deplored the stalemate: \u201cWe know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n