Colombia petitions ICJ to join South Africa’s Gaza genocide case against Israel
Application for second intervention on behalf of Palestinians cites Latin American country’s wish to ensure ‘the very existence of the Palestinian people’
Colombia has asked the International Court of Justice to allow the country to intervene in South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip, the court said Friday.
In its application, Colombia called on the court to ensure “the safety and, indeed, the very existence of the Palestinian people.”
The ICJ, the highest United Nations court, can allow states to intervene and give their views. Several states have said they would also seek to intervene in the case, but so far only Colombia and Nicaragua have filed a public request, while Germany requested in January to intervene in support of Israel.
On March 28, ICJ judges ordered Israel to take all necessary and effective action to ensure basic food supplies arrive without delay to Palestinians in Gaza.
In January, the ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the genocide convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza.
Israel denies targeting Palestinian civilians, saying its sole interest is to destroy the terrorist group Hamas. Lawyers for Israel have dismissed South Africa’s case as an abuse of the genocide convention.
Israel launched its war on the Palestinian terror group after thousands of its operatives stormed the country’s south on October 7, killing nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking 253 hostages.
Vowing to dismantle Hamas and release the hostages, Israel mounted an unprecedented assault on the Gaza Strip, which has displaced about half the enclave’s residents while destroying about half its residences. United Nations officials have said that hunger levels in the Strip approach famine levels.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 32,000 people in the Strip have been killed in the fighting so far, a figure that cannot be independently verified and includes some 13,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle. Israel also says it killed some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7. Over 250 IDF soldiers have been killed in Gaza.
