Türkiye’s joining in Israel genocide case could inspire other countries to do the same: Lawyer

By Melike Pala

Türkiye’s recent announcement that it will become a party to South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) will encourage other countries to do the same, according to an Italian lawyer.

“More third states should intervene in the South Africa versus Israel proceedings, even just to ask for clarifications about what they should do when a danger of genocide is detected. So, I think that from this point of view, the intervention by Türkiye catalyzes more third state interventions in support of South Africa,” Luigi Daniele, a senior lecturer at Nottingham Law School in the UK, told Anadolu.

Daniele added that Türkiye is an important NATO member which enables its joining in the case to have significant consequences.

Saying that the ICJ’s injunctions in the genocide case led to significant changes in the approaches of third states, he added that this stems from the states facing the risk of being brought before the ICJ due to complicity.

Arguing that Western countries attach importance to protecting their allies rather than international law, he said: “International crimes are not something that can be forgiven when the allies commit them and condemned when rivals commit them.”

“Civilian populations will pay the consequences, as it happened already for the Palestinian civilian population, partly also for the Israelis’ even young population,” he added.

He said the political leaderships of the EU and US have been the “most complicit” in serious human rights violations of Israel.

“As a European citizen, I was shocked to hear the unilateralism of the declarations of leaders like (European Commission President) Ursula von der Leyen on their land. It seemed for months and months, while children and women were being exterminated, that nothing was happening, or that this was somehow an unfortunate but forgivable necessity of war,” he added.

This is in “striking contrast” to all the solemn declarations of values including accountability for crimes against civilians in the Ukraine war, he said, adding that the EU, alongside the US, is really at “the top of its double standards.”

- US stance 'beyond hypocritical'

He said Russia's actions in Ukraine and Israel's actions in Palestine are similar in legal terms, but that the US attitude towards Russia’s acts is completely different.

He described the US reaction to the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation of Israel as “beyond hypercritical, a preposterous position that undermines the international legal system.”

“Actually (it) seems like a sort of tribalism of the Western states, perceiving themselves as a tribe, above the law, and perceiving the law itself as something that is only for their enemies,” he added.

Underlining that this attitude threatens international security and increases the risk of world war, he said: “If you keep asserting that the law is only for your enemies, you are basically pushing escalation by escalation, the worldwide political arena to the thresholds of a world war in which the new rules will be written by war.”

Mentioning next month’s European Parliament elections, he said the European people have seen what was done against the Palestinian civilian population and demand justice.

“So, if our leaders don't take steps in this direction now, they will pay the prices in the ballots,” he said.

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip in retaliation for an Oct. 7 Hamas attack which killed some 1,200 people. More than 34,700 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, the vast majority of them women and children, and over 78,000 others injured, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Nearly seven months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January said it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and ordered Tel Aviv to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.

Hamas said on Monday evening that it has accepted a Qatari-Egyptian proposal for a Gaza cease-fire.