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Opinion | Time for world to follow South Africa’s moral lead on Gaza war

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Opinion | Time for world to follow South Africa’s moral lead on Gaza war


Egyptians are also applauding the pro-Palestinian stance of UN expert Francesca Albanese, who recently said she was being threatened over a report she published in which she accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. As fears grow of Gazans dying of starvation, the ICJ’s orders should be viewed as a victory for South Africa. It indicates a potential change in the geopolitical order – a shift in the global legal order and a victory for the international rule of law.
There is a growing fear today that hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning a ground assault on Rafah. The government of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi threatened in February to suspend the Camp David Accords it signed with Israel in 1978 – if the Israeli military invades Rafah and tries to expel Palestinians into the Sinai Peninsula.

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Israeli forces open fire on crowd of Palestinians seeking aid,, as Gaza death toll surpasses 30,000

Israeli forces open fire on crowd of Palestinians seeking aid,, as Gaza death toll surpasses 30,000

Observing the ICJ orders from Egypt is like viewing them through two lenses and two identities – one Arab and the other African – with Egyptians praising Pretoria for filing the ICJ case. More than once, I have heard Egyptians celebrating Pretoria and crying out that “we’re all South Africans”. This rising spirit of Africanism among Egyptians deserves some reckoning.
Viewing themselves as victims of colonialism and apartheid, black South Africans support Palestinians’ struggle for a homeland. Therefore, they perceive Hamas as an anti-colonial rebel movement similar to the once-outlawed African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa. Likewise, intellectuals have often argued that Zionism is largely influenced by its perception of white colonialism and South Africa’s apartheid system.
African states are emerging today as strong supporters of the Palestinian cause. In a meeting of the non-aligned movement in the Ugandan capital Kampala in January, African leaders fiercely condemned Israel’s indiscriminate military assault on Gaza and called for its end. Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza is resonating in the conscience of many Africans and conjuring images of a history of colonial tyranny and segregation.

After all, it was African countries which buttressed UN Resolution 3379 of 1975 that determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination”. Since then, many Africans no longer view the Palestinian cause merely as an Arab one but as a cause of all oppressed peoples who have been deprived of the right to a homeland.

Although many African states have tried to keep politics separate from trade ties, the Israeli aggression against Palestinians is likely to hurt ties with African nations and push the latter to take a more affirmative position in favour of Palestinians – a step which many Africans have demanded.

In March 2023, for instance, the South African parliament voted in favour of a motion that would downgrade its embassy in Israel into a liaison office in solidarity with Palestinians. Later that year, the parliament adopted a motion that called for shutting down the Israeli embassy and suspending all diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv. In November, South Africa and Chad recalled their diplomats from Israel.

In short, the predicament of the Palestinians weighs heavily on the conscience of many Africans, who see the Gaza war as a spin-off of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not a Hamas-Israeli war. Hence, Africa will witness regional shifts and new geopolitical realignments in the coming years, with the struggle for Palestinian liberation slowly changing from a pan-Arab cause to a pan-African one. It is no wonder that South Africa filed a case against Israel at the ICJ; South African President Cyril Ramaphosa well knows what constitutes genocide and war crimes.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela chats with Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak during a visit to the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem on October 18, 1999, as part of a Middle East tour that included visits to Iran, Syria and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters

The current South African government taking the lead reminds me of the words of the late ANC leader Nelson Mandela during a tour of Gaza: “The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots.” While serving as South Africa’s first black president, Mandela often tied his country’s anti-apartheid struggle with the Palestinians’ battle for statehood.

The ICJ orders will add to the moral pressure on Tel Aviv. It is now incumbent upon the international community, particularly Western nations, to buttress the court orders and fully denounce Israeli wartime conduct that has thus far left more than 32,000 Palestinians dead and more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s population displaced and facing famine.

Mohamed El-Bendary, an independent researcher based in Egypt, taught journalism in the United States and New Zealand



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