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End of the Empire is a once-monthly feature on all news relating to the transition from the unipolar world of the US Empire to a multipolar world.
As BRICS member South Africa trounced the Israeli legal team’s defense in the landmark trial at the International Court of Justice, and won an injunction against Israel that it should take all necessary measures to prevent genocide in Gaza, few members of the Global South—almost unanimously of the same opinion as South Africa—predicted the court’s verdict would change anything.
Indeed, the Israelis simply continued their slaughter, starvation, and demolition in Gaza, declaring the court’s verdict as biased and irrelevant. The US made every international action necessary to ensure the slaughter, starvation, and demolition could continue for as long as possible, and in the minds of the rest of the world, demonstrated what they suspected was true: there is no international law the Americans will not violate if it means maintaining the empire.
In response, and inspired by the performance of the South Africans, 50 nations presented evidence to the ICJ that Israeli occupation is ongoing, has been going on for years, and is of the sort illegal under international law. Fellow BRICS member China led the headlines alongside South Africa saying that an occupied nation has an inalienable right to defend itself against the aggressor nation, and that the Palestinians’ right to self-defense should override the Israeli right to self-defense, being that Israeli forces are defending themselves in occupied land.
“We as South Africans sense, see, hear, and feel to our core the inhumane discriminatory policies and practices of the Israeli regime as an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against Black people in my country,” said Vusimuzi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, where the ICJ is based.
The last time Israel was taken to court over the question of the rights of the Palestinians in the occupied territories was 2004, when it ruled that Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem was illegal, according to Al Jazeera. Israel rejected that ruling, accusing the court of being politically motivated; the same sort of accusations leveled at the court during this recent hearing, which they did not attend.
The words of the court and the UN have no bearing on Israel’s conduct and the US complicity in it unless the rest of the world translates those words into actions.
Division of Labor
“Though South Africa failed to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, its case against Israel at The Hague is a pivotal moment with broad significance: it signals the readiness of the Global South to challenge the existing Western-dominated international order that it perceives as unfair,” writes Peter Chang, a research associate at the Institute of China Studies, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.
In January, at the 3rd annual “South Summit”—the flagship meeting of the “G77” named in mockery of the more elite group to which the US is a member, the UN Secretary-General spoke to a group of delegates and highlighted the outsized Western influence on the most critical international institutions, such as the World Bank and UN Security Council.
Sec. General Antonio Guterres called them both “out of date, out of time, and out of step, reflecting a bygone age when many of your countries were colonized”.
“The United Nations Security Council is paralyzed by geopolitical divisions. Its composition does not reflect the reality of today’s world. It must be reformed,” he added.
To that end, Peter Chang sees a changing order driven by a “division of labor” where China advocates for alternative trade and economic arrangements and countries like South Africa advocate for better systems of accountability to international law.
The modern members of the G77, containing communists, Catholics, Muslims, and capitalists, know now more clearly than ever that the United States will kill or sanction at whatever levels are required in order to maintain its privileged place in the world. Groups that attempt to fight back are ruthlessly bombed, starved, or excluded from accessing international economic arrangements.
As has always been the case with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians since 1967, change can only come through actions, which unfortunately have never materialized. The G77 and China (China does not consider itself a member officially because it’s in the Northern Hemisphere and wealthy) must turn the strong words seen at the ICJ this year into actions, not only for the sake of the Palestinians, but for the whole Global South. WaL
