“Israel has engaged in, is engaging in and risks further engaging in genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza.”

South Africa is taking legal action to halt Israel’s aggressive military offensive in Palestine’s Gaza, filing a lawsuit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Tel Aviv of breaching the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

On December 29, the country filed a petition with the ICJ to initiate genocidal proceedings against Tel Aviv, a move that comes after South Africa suspended relations with Israel on November 21 in response to the Israeli army’s intensified attacks on Gaza.

Cape Town requested that Israel immediately cease all acts and measures in violation of its obligations as a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention. The convention defines genocide as acts, such as killings, that are “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

South Africa will present its case at the ICJ in The Hague on January 11. Israel — which has rejected the genocide accusation, claiming it lacks a legal foundation and constitutes a “despicable and contemptuous exploitation” of the court — will then present its defence on January 12.

Cape Town, which has been a the forefront of Israeli criticism, has long supported the Palestinian movement for freedom, drawing parallels between the plight of the Palestinians to its own struggle with apartheid.