‘International law is on the line’ – Pretoria urges global action to halt Gaza genocide

South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) has called on all states to take immediate action to halt Israel’s genocide in Gaza, saying “the need for international action has never been more urgent”. 

This comes after a United Nations (UN) Commission of Inquiry found on Tuesday, 16 September, that Israel has committed, and is continuing to commit, genocide in Gaza and that top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, incited these genocidal acts. 

“The commission finds that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza,” chair of the commission and former South African judge and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“It is clear that there is an intent to destroy the Palestinians in Gaza through acts that meet the criteria set forth in the Genocide Convention,” Pillay added. 

In a statement on Wednesday, Dirco spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said South Africa takes “solemn account” of the commission’s findings. 

“The commission has concluded that the State of Israel bears responsibility for the commission of genocide, the failure to prevent genocide, and the failure to punish genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” Phiri said.

“While a people faces the threat of physical erasure in real time, the entire system of international law is on the line. At stake is not merely the fate of the Palestinian people, but the very principle of justice over impunity,” he added. 

At a press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the situation in the Gaza Strip “horrendous”.  

“We are seeing massive destruction of neighbourhoods, [and] now the systematic destruction of Gaza City. We are seeing massive killing of civilians in a way that I do not remember in any conflict since I am Secretary-General. And we are seeing dramatic obstacles to the distribution of aid.

“Independently of the names that I’ve given, the truth is that this is something that is morally, politically, and legally intolerable,” Guterres told reporters in New York.

Read more: UN inquiry finds top Israeli officials incited genocide in Gaza

The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, was established by the Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. The panel’s 72-page report is based on findings contained in three previous reports that it has published since 7 October 2023, which found, among other things, that Israeli forces had committed war crimes in Gaza.

On Tuesday, the commission found that Israel’s actions in Gaza constituted genocide, as Israeli forces had committed four of the five genocidal acts defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention:

• Killing;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm;
• Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the Palestinians in whole or in part; and
• Imposing measures to prevent births.

“The responsibility for these atrocity crimes lies with Israeli authorities at the highest echelons who have orchestrated a genocidal campaign for almost two years now with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian group in Gaza,” said Pillay.

Israeli officials have dismissed the report, with Israel accusing the commission of having a political agenda against it and diverging from its mandate, according to a Reuters report.

Deepening humanitarian crisis

The commission’s report was published as Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza City on Tuesday, forcing thousands of Palestinians to flee once again. The Associated Press reported heavy bombardment of Gaza’s biggest city on Tuesday, as Israeli troops began moving in from the outskirts of the city.

Last month, the world’s leading hunger monitoring authority, the IPC Famine Review Committee, officially declared a famine in Gaza City, with more than half a million people affected.

Read more: 

• ‘Widespread starvation’ – aid agencies warn of deepening humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza
• Many of my staff can’t work because they are starving, says Gaza City hospital director

At least 422 Palestinians have died of starvation in Gaza, including at least 130 children, since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, according to a report from Al Jazeera. Since Hamas’ 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 hostages taken, Israel has killed more than 64,000 people in Gaza, according to Palestinian health authorities. 

At a press conference at the UN in Geneva, UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) communications manager for North Africa and the Middle East, Tess Ingram, provided an on-the-ground account of conditions described in the commission of inquiry’s (COI’s) report.

During the press conference, at which Daily Maverick was present, Ingram described witnessing the “deadly threat” of forced mass displacement of families from Gaza City as Israel announced its fourth evacuation order since the beginning of the conflict.

She recounted meeting Isra, a mother who, with her five “dirty, thirsty and starving children”, made a six-hour journey on foot from Gaza City to the south, pushing their few belongings, without a clear destination.

“People like Isra are being pushed to a so-called humanitarian zone encompassing Al-Mawasi and surrounding areas. A sea of makeshift tents, human despair and insufficient supplies or services to support the hundreds of thousands already living there,” she said.

Ingram added that the malnutrition crisis was spiralling out of control.

“We estimate 26,000 children in the Gaza Strip currently require treatment for acute malnutrition today, including more than 10,000 in Gaza City alone. In August, more than one in eight children that we screened across the Strip were acutely malnourished, the highest level we’ve ever recorded in the Gaza Strip.”

She said that 16 nutrition centres in Gaza City had been forced to shut down due to the evacuation orders and military escalation, eliminating a third of the remaining life-saving treatment sites for children.

International Court of Justice

While the independent COI’s report is the strongest UN finding to date, its conclusions do not represent the organisation’s official position, according to a report in The Guardian.

Pressed by reporters to comment on the report at a press conference at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday afternoon, Guterres stopped short of saying Israel was committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

“It is not in the attributions of the secretary-general to do the legal determination of genocide.

“That belongs to the adequate judicial entities, namely the International Court of Justice. And let us be aware that, at the present moment, the International Court of Justice is dealing with a case whose name is Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” Guterres told reporters.

“Now, the fact that I do not have the competence to do the legal determination of genocide doesn’t mean that I do not consider that what’s happening in Gaza after the horrific attacks by Hamas in October two years ago … is horrendous.”

He said that while the report was from an independent COI, he believed that Israel should take its findings into account. “Everybody should take the report into account,” he said.

Read more: Dirco’s Zane Dangor speaks out on ICJ genocide case as Gaza teeters on edge of famine

Guterres said he would be willing to meet with Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly in New York next week, if Netanyahu requests a meeting.

‘South Africa’s case is not speculative’ 

In December 2023, South Africa filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare that Israel was violating the 1948 Genocide Convention. Almost two years later, the case is still ongoing.

Phiri said the report stands as “a stark confirmation of the very dire situation” that compelled South Africa to approach the ICJ. 

“The ICJ subsequently issued three successive orders on provisional measures on 26 January, 28 March, and 24 May 2024, aimed at protecting Palestinians in Gaza from irreparable harm. It is with profound disappointment that the commission’s report highlights the regrettable fact that these binding interim orders have not been heeded by Israel.

“In the face of this latest report, which provides a comprehensive, forensically detailed account of an ongoing genocide, the need for international action has never been more urgent. South Africa reiterates its call for all States to immediately fulfill their solemn obligations under the Genocide Convention,” said Phiri. 

The international justice cluster lead at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, Dr Atilla Kisla, told Daily Maverick that the findings of the UN COI “echo the submissions” that SA made to the ICJ.

“South Africa … made submissions with respect to the killings of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, denial of food, water, medicine and the openly dehumanising language used by Israeli leaders. Beyond that, the issue of denial of food and water in terms of humanitarian aid, as well as the protection of civilians, has formed part of the various orders by the ICJ in this matter.

“The UN commission of inquiry has now independently confirmed those same patterns and, crucially, found that they amount to genocide,” said Kisla.

He said the report “adds weight” to the claims made by South Africa before the ICJ.

“This is not [a] duplication — it is an independent confirmation of what is happening on the ground. It shows that South Africa’s case is not speculative. It shows that South Africa’s claim is grounded in facts, which, according to the commission, satisfy the requirements of the crime of genocide under international law,” explained Kisla. DM 

This article was updated at 7:30am on Wednesday, 17 September to include the response from Dirco.

Victoria O’Regan is a 2025 Dag Hammarskjöld Journalism Fellow whose reporting on the 80th UN General Assembly and its activities in New York has been sponsored by the Dag Hammarskjöld Fund for Journalists.