The British government has been accused of double standards after submitting detailed legal arguments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to support claims that Myanmar has committed genocide, but refraining from doing the same in the case of Israel.
In late December, South Africa started proceedings against Israel at the ICJ over the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has so far killed nearly 23,000 Palestinians. The lawsuit says Israel’s actions are “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group.”
In early January, it was announced that the ICJ’s judges in The Hague will hear South Africa’s case against Israel after the African country asked the top court to urgently declare that the Tel Aviv regime has breached its responsibilities under international law since October 7, when it launched its onslaught against Gaza.
While the UK made a 21-page “declaration of intervention” in the case of Myanmar's genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group jointly with five other countries, it is not supporting South Africa as it prepares to convince the ICJ that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Israel has said it will defend itself at the UN court, claiming that it only seeks to destroy the Hamas resistance movement, not the Palestinian people.
According to a Sunday report by The Guardian, Tayab Ali, the head of international law at Bindmans law firm, says the significance of the UK submission on Myanmar “lay in showing the importance the UK attaches to adherence to the [UN] Genocide Convention and in showing the UK took a wide, and not a narrow, definition of acts of genocide and the intent to commit genocide.”
“It would be wholly disingenuous if the UK, six weeks after advancing such a significant and broad definition of genocide in the case of Myanmar, now adopts a narrow one in the case of Israel,” he added.
