South Africa leads the way with ICJ case against Israel

EVEN as India and China vie with each other to lead the Global South, South Africa may have taken a lead of sorts. Both New Delhi and Beijing play it their own way when it comes to leading what was once known as the Third World and is today called the Global South. Both steer clear of formal alliances, but India’s ties with the US have become intense and assumed a strategic dimension, as indeed have China’s relations with Russia.

South Africa has stolen a march on India and China by getting the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to examine a war being waged against a Global South country through the lens of ‘genocide’ rather than the prevailing humanitarian laws relating to war. This is a fraught issue for the Global South, which is often at the receiving end of wars and mayhem.

Genocide is a loaded word, and it’s an irony of ironies that Israel’s conduct is being examined in relation to it. It was, after all, after the terrible Holocaust that the Genocide Convention that outlaws the destructive actions (physical or mental) against a national, ethnic or religious group was formulated in 1948.

A 17-member bench of the ICJ ruled that Israel’s war in Gaza may be violative of the Genocide Convention. It did not call for a ceasefire, but called on Israel to prevent acts outlined in Article 2 of the Convention. The court will take time to make its final determination. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa termed it “a decisive victory for the international rule of the law”. On the other hand, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the court’s decision not to call for a ceasefire was a victory for Israel.

In the meantime, the court has called on Israel to limit the harm to Palestinian civilians and asked Israel to take a number of measures to ameliorate the conditions of the Palestinians and report on compliance within a month.

What is important has been the support that South Africa received from countries of the Global South, regardless of their current geopolitical inclinations. Countries like Turkey, Jordan, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Venezuela, Namibia and the Maldives have publicly backed the South Africans. The EU was silent on the case and Israelis received US support. The Indian judge at the ICJ, Dalveer Bhandari, went along with the judgment, but the government has remained silent on the interim ruling. The Chinese, too, have not commented on the ruling.

India’s position on the Israel-Hamas crisis has been ‘proper’ but not leader-like. The Modi government has never made its admiration for Israel secret and the Prime Minister himself has looked at his Israeli counterpart in terms of friendship. India has aligned itself to the US-led initiatives to normalise Israel’s role in the region. One is through the India-Israel-US-UAE (I2U2) grouping and the other through the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor. These initiatives cannot now avoid confronting the Israel-Palestine issue frontally instead of bypassing it, as they had sought to do earlier.

The term ‘Global South’ may resonate in current geopolitics, but it remains substantively nebulous. It manifests itself in various organisations such as the African Union, League of Arab States or the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). New Delhi self-consciously projected itself as a leader of the Global South grouping while chairing the G20 last year. But almost immediately it was evident that it would have to contend with China, which successfully promoted expansion of BRICS.

India’s leadership of the Global South depends on the substance of Indian foreign policy, not its rhetoric. India is now substantially aligned with the US and can even be termed as a ‘Western’ state geopolitically. This manifests itself in its association with the Quad and the relationships with Japan and Australia in the western pacific and with France and the UAE in the western Indian Ocean.

Whether it is east or west of the Indo-Pacific region, India confronts China as a major political rival. But even as India takes baby steps by reaching out to the Philippines in the western Pacific, China is moving to position itself as an alternative to the US in West Asia. It has already promoted the Iran-Saudi Arabia détente and offered to broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians at the outbreak of the conflict but has done little since.

Beijing is now being called on by the US to assist in reining in the Houthis through its influence on Iran. This was the purpose of the meeting last week between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

India’s Western alignment is not a permanent feature. New Delhi has always sought to be its own pole in what it says ought to be a multilateral international order, hence its insistence on maintaining good ties with Russia and Iran. The Western orientation is occasioned by an opportunistic desire to take advantage of China’s estrangement with the West.

What has held India back till now is its economy. Now, there are expectations that all restraints on the Indian economy have eased and the country is poised for a period of sustained and high economic growth, which will also translate into enhanced military capacity.

The Global South is a rhetorical stepping stone for New Delhi to project a larger-than-life image. Neither China nor India is likely to put the interests of the Global South before their own and that is why we see South Africa taking up the contentious issue of Palestine.