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The Central American nation of Nicaragua joined Colombia as one of two other nations, apart from South Africa, which has entered the International Court of Justice to support the attempts to designate the slaughter in Gaza as being a genocide.
In the case of Nicaragua, it is to try and hold a large military backer of Israel—Germany—to account for transfers of weapons that violate, as the Nicaraguan delegation saw it, Germany’s commitments to the Genocide Convention, which they allege Germany is breaking in the transfer of these weapons.
On Monday, the Nicaraguan delegation presented its case as part of a two-day hearing, accusing Germany of “facilitating the commission of genocide,” and filed a request for five provisional measures—similar to a court injunction—that would order Germany to “immediately suspend its aid to Israel, in particular its military assistance, including military equipment” and that it “reverse its decision to suspend the funding of UNRWA,” referring to the UN program that manages humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza.
“Germany cannot but be aware that the munitions, the military equipment, and the war weapons it is supplying” to Israel is facilitating its human rights violations in Gaza, said Nicaraguan Ambassador to the Netherlands Carlos Jose Arguello Gomez, who led his nation’s delegation to the ICJ.
“It does not matter if an artillery shell is delivered straight from Germany to an Israeli tank shelling a hospital or university, or whether that artillery shell goes to replenish Israel’s stockpile for use at some later date”.
€328 million worth of total military equipment was transferred to Israel last year, a tenfold increase compared to the year before, and an enormous amount of it was delivered in October.
On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council called for a suspension of arms sales to Israel, marking the first time the body has taken a position since Hamas’ attack, and the launch of Israel’s slaughter and terror campaign against the Palestinians.
A strong defense
As WaL reported in February, the success of South Africa’s case against Israel which saw the granting of all its provisional measures to ensure Israel complied with her obligations under the Genocide Convention, had the potential to accelerate a decoupling of the Global South away from the West’s dominance of international institutions of law and commerce.
In the wake of the ICJ ruling, 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.
Going beyond even that, Colombia filed an application at the ICJ to allow the country to join South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide, becoming the second nation to go so far. Nicaragua, who presented oral arguments and evidence against Germany on Monday, was the third.
Offering its defense, the German delegation stated that their nation had a particular responsibility for Israel’s security based on its historical conduct against the Jewish race, but that the nature of their licensing process for exporting weapons meant that, contrary to accusations made by Nicaragua, almost no weapons that could be used to harm the people of Gaza had been delivered.
Instead, the vast majority of the €328 million worth of equipment was “defensive in nature” and consisted of items like “protection against chemical hazards, helmets, body protection plates, communications equipment, camouflage paint, and other components of a subordinate nature”.
The defense demonstrated that in four instances alone have “war weapons” been licensed since October 2023, and only one of those, said the counsel, was suitable for combat applications—an arsenal of shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapons. The rest were shells and small arms ammunition licensed for training purposes and which were not manufactured in a suitable way to make them weapons of war, according to the first legal counsel to speak.
Two drones that can be equipped with missiles and bombs that Nicaragua alleged were transferred to Israel, were actually Israel’s all along, and only operated by Germany as part of a training exercise, but never left the country, the defense claimed.
20% of the total equipment exported to Israel was destined for re-export back to Germany, while roughly €200 million of the €328 million in total exports were sent in October, with the following three months seeing the total amount plummet to as low as €500,000.
The defense was precise, and unlike Israel’s unrelated arguments at the ICJ in January, carefully addressed each and every accusation made by Nicaragua. Unless there is significant falsehood uncovered in the next trial phase, or substantial, additional evidence presented by Nicaragua, one would imagine that the ICJ would throw its case. WaL
PICTURED ABOVE: View of the courtroom at the opening of ICJ hearings in the case Timor-Leste v. Australia. PC: UN/ICJ – released for informative material.
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