Pretoria says that Israel’s flouting of the ICJ’s orders undermines the court’s legitimacy and is paving the way for the destruction of the Palestinian people
News Desk, The Cradle, AUG 30, 2026
(Photo credit: REUTERS, Creator: THILO SCHMUELGEN)
South Africa submitted a detailed dossier to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 25 August, formally accusing Israel of defying legally binding provisional measures requiring it to prevent genocide and safeguard essential aid in Gaza.
“The Court’s orders are binding on Israel, and the international community also has an obligation to protect the Palestinian people from genocide, including to take all necessary action to prevent and punish genocide,” South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Pretoria says Israel has failed to comply with the ICJ’s three sets of legally binding provisional measures issued in January, March, and May 2024.
Those measures included requirements concerning the prevention of acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention, the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the halting of an offensive that destroyed the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, and the granting of access to the strip for UN investigators.
“Regrettably, Israel has not complied with the Orders. South Africa continues to pursue all avenues available to it to seek Israel’s full and immediate compliance with the Court’s Orders,” the statement added.
The dossier provided evidence of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, including the killing of at least 73,407 Palestinians and injuring of 174,335 more since October 2023.
The total dead and injured amounts to over 10 percent of Gaza’s entire population, the dossier noted.
Some estimates of the dead in Gaza are much higher, reaching the hundreds of thousands due to the indirect effects of Israel’s bombing and demolition campaign.
Pretoria highlighted Israel’s ongoing atrocities against Palestinians, including arbitrary detentions, widespread torture, sexual violence, and a threefold spike in miscarriages among pregnant women due to Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s critical health and other infrastructure.
The dossier noted that despite the alleged ceasefire reached in October 2025 between Israel and Hamas, the Israeli military has continued to kill an average of one Palestinian child per day.
South Africa says that Israel’s ongoing non-compliance directly threatens the court’s legitimacy while paving the way for the destruction of the Palestinian people.
“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 ministry’s statement warned.
Israeli leaders say they want to ethnically cleanse Gaza of its roughly 2 million inhabitants to make way for the annexation and Jewish settlement of the strip. To accomplish this, they say they wish to make life in Gaza so dangerous and unbearable that Palestinians “choose” to “voluntarily migrate” to third countries.
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