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Palestinian Justice Won’t Wait for the West

The formation of the Hague Group ensures that the world won’t forget Israel’s crimes in Gaza — nor can Israeli war criminals evading justice, writes Ronnie Kasrils.

The horrors of the Israeli assault on Gaza and its people are beyond words. Yet, as we watch hundreds of thousands of Palestinians make their way across the ruins of Gaza to return to where their homes once stood, we cannot help but admire their resilience and their refusal to be displaced from their land and country.

Israel failed in its stated objective to put an end to armed resistance in Gaza. It failed to terrorise the people of Gaza into exile. But the killing and theft of land continues in the West Bank, and Israel cannot be trusted to hold to the ceasefire in Gaza in good faith. The conditions under which the Palestinian people are subject to merciless oppression remain. The world order in which Israel, the West, and its various proxy states, are granted impunity for criminal and even genocidal conduct endures.

Things could get even worse. With Donald Trump in the White House, and Elon Musk and other tech barons at his side, many of them fanatical Zionists, the dangers facing Palestine have intensified to unprecedented levels. A brutal convergence of authoritarianism, corporate profiteering, and unbridled imperial arrogance is underway.

Trump’s recent comment, echoing a previous statement by his son-in-law, that he wants to ‘just clean out’ Gaza with the help of Jordan and Egypt is a clear indication that, like the most right-wing elements in Israel, he aspires to the complete destruction of Gaza as a Palestinian territory. His presentation of the land of an oppressed people, in the language of the real estate huckster, as a ‘phenomenal location on the sea’ is utterly chilling.

Standing by the Movement

Resistance within Palestine is preparing to hold firm. Ordinary Palestinians are beginning the work of remaking homes from rubble. But under these conditions it is also vital that international solidarity with Palestine is intensified. Solidarity is required in the form of combined action by ordinary people, popular organisations and states.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign remains an essential tactic, as do actions like student occupations, dock workers refusing to offload ships carrying weapons, coal or fuel to Israel, and actions by states to force Israel to hold to international law.

Several states have already taken principled actions. South Africa charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice in January last year. In August last year Namibia refused to allow a ship carrying military cargo to Israel to dock at its Walvis Bay port. Colombia stopped coal exports to Israel in June last year and expelled the Israeli ambassador in October. Along with Colombia, Bolivia, and Chile have also recalled their ambassadors from Israel.

But as we recently witnessed with Donald Trump’s open and boorish intimidation of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, following Petro’s decision to deny landing rights to two U.S. military aircraft carrying deported Colombian citizens, any country that stands up to the U.S. alone remains vulnerable.

The thuggish response to Petro from Trump is part of a broader attempt by the US, with the backing of right-wing forces and governments elsewhere, to crush any assertion of political independence from the West, along with the spirit of principled multilateralism.

After South Africa charged Israel with genocide in January last year the white-dominated and hysterically pro-Western media at home went into howling attack mode. Naledi Pandor, at the time South Africa’s highly principled foreign minister, was vilified by these forces at home and attacked abroad. South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, was repeatedly accused, with no evidence being provided, of having been bribed by Iran to take Israel to the ICJ. With barely veiled racism a principled position was misrepresented as a transactional, corruption-driven deal.

In February 2024, the South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act was introduced into the US Congress. It proposed to enforce a review of the relationship between the US and South Africa citing, among other claims, South Africa filing a ‘politically motivated and unfounded case’ against Israel at the ICJ.

On 9 January this year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the ‘Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act’ that aims to impose sanctions on individuals associated with the International Criminal Court who pursue investigations or prosecutions against U.S. citizens or those of allied nations, such as Israel.

The announcement on 31 January that nine countries have formed The Hague Group and committed to ‘coordinated legal, economic, and diplomatic measures’ against Israel is a significant advance in building global solidarity with Palestine. The nine countries — Belize, Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa — have collectively agreed on a set of shared commitments. These are to uphold the arrest warrants issued against Israeli officials by the International Criminal Court; prevent the provision or transfer of arms, munitions, and related equipment to Israel where there is a clear risk that they might be used to violate international law; and prevent the docking of vessels at any of their ports where there is a risk of the vessel being used to carry military fuel and weaponry to Israel.

These are modest commitments but, nonetheless, this development marks a renewed the spirit of unified defiance of imperialism, a spirit that is vital in the planetary struggle to oppose the devastation wrecked on humanity by the West and its proxy states.

Renewing Anticolonialism

Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, has, like his predecessor Pandor, courageously taken a principled position on the question of Palestine. As he remarked ‘The Hague Group’s formation marks a turning point in the global response to exceptionalism and the broader erosion of international law. It sends a clear message: no nation is above the law, and no crime will go unanswered.’

Yvonne Dausab, Namibia’s Minister of Justice, has also been exemplary in her commitment to solidarity with Palestine. ‘The world cannot stand by and watch,’ she said, when we made a commitment more than 75 years ago, that ‘never again shall the world suffer atrocities. We cannot be and must not be selective about protecting lives regardless of who the victims are, all lives matter, Palestinian lives matter.’

We must not forget that the US and other Western powers backed the apartheid regime well into the 1980s, and then tried to shape the transition from apartheid into a liberal capitalism system, a system that would leave white wealth and property intact.

We must not forget that the defeat of apartheid in South Africa was achieved by the triangulated forces of the resistance of the South African people, the mobilisations and boycotts, many organised by the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and the actions of anti-imperialist states. Cuba led the defeat of the apartheid military in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola in 1988. The wider socialist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, provided invaluable support to the struggle against apartheid, and to many other movements fighting for liberation from colonial rule.

Active unity against imperialism remains critically important today. The crimes against humanity by Israel are not the only reason why building unified blocs against imperialism is essential. As Rwanda, a rapacious authoritarian state acting as a Western proxy, continues its invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo in search of minerals the urgency of building a wider, coordinated struggle against imperialism cannot be overstated.

We need to rebuild something of the spirit of the time when the Third World was not just a geographical or economic category, but a political project rooted in anti-colonial struggles, aimed at creating a unified global bloc to challenge imperialism. Emerging through the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955 and then the Non-Aligned Movement, this project sought to establish political and economic sovereignty for newly independent nations.

The Tricontinental Conference, held in Havana, Cuba, in January 1966, was the most significant gathering of revolutionary movements, anti-colonial leaders, and socialist states from Africa, Asia, and Latin America in this period of combined opposition to imperialism.

Spearheaded by figures like Fidel Castro and Amílcar Cabral the conference developed a vision of global solidarity that linked anti-colonial struggles with socialist revolution. It also strengthened ties among revolutionary movements and provided ideological support for liberation struggles in Vietnam, Palestine, Southern Africa and elsewhere, and fostered the development of a radical, internationalist consciousness.

There is a long way to go to rebuild this kind of militancy but no country acting on its own can make sustained progress.

After its approach to the ICJ South Africa was less isolated and vulnerable after countries like Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ireland, Mexico, Namibia, Spain, and many others, joined its case. Tentative possibilities for a renewal of the spirit of internationalism began to emerge.

When the ICJ issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on 21 November 2024 a clear international split was evident. Countries like Argentina, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and the United Kingdom rushed to condemn the court. But a significant number of countries welcomed the actions of the court. There was an increasing sense that a critical mass of countries, mostly in the Global South, would not be intimidated into complicity with genocide.

There has always been a special bond between the liberation struggles in South Africa and Palestine, rooted in their shared experience of brutal settler colonial oppression. The defeat of Israel will require a similar triangulation of forces to those that defeated apartheid: the resistance of the Palestinian people, solidarity from ordinary people around the world and unified action by states willing to stand up to the West. The emerging bloc of African and Latin American countries, along with Malaysia, that have formed the Hague Group must now be expanded to bring in more countries.

With the growing power of BRICS, as well the challenge that Russia and China mount to full spectrum Western dominance of the planet, there are more and more opportunities to organise states across the Global South around questions of principle and economic interests. It is, for example, very encouraging that the newly elected African Patriots of Senegal for Work, Ethics, and Fraternity (PASTEF) government in Senegal is resolved to renegotiate exploitative energy contracts with Western multinational corporations.

As Cabral said at the Tricontinental Conference ‘We are not going to eliminate imperialism by shouting insults against it.’  Imperialism can only be defeated by building solid forms of counter power, and that requires solidarity between people, organisations and countries. The formation of the Hague Group is a moment to celebrate and to build on.