/ 4 February 2025

The Hague Group: An important breakthrough for solidarity with Palestine

Palestinian students celebrate the political unity deal between Hamas and rival party Fatah in Gaza City – a positive step the Israeli government seems bent on ignoring.
There has always been a special bond between the liberation struggles in South Africa and Palestine, rooted in their shared experience of brutal settler colonial oppression.

The horrors of the Israeli assault on Gaza and its people are beyond words. Yet, as we watch hundreds of thousands of Palestinians make their way across the ruins of Gaza to return to where their homes once stood, we cannot help but admire their resilience and their refusal to be displaced from their land and country.

Israel failed in its stated objective to put an end to armed resistance in Gaza. It failed to terrorise the people of Gaza into exile. But the killing and the theft of land continues in the West Bank and Israel cannot be trusted to hold the ceasefire in Gaza in good faith. 

The conditions under which the Palestinian people are subject to merciless oppression remain. The world order in which Israel and the West, and its various proxy states, are granted impunity for criminal and even genocidal conduct endures.

Things could get even worse. With Donald Trump in the White House, and Elon Musk and other tech barons at his side, many of them fanatical Zionists, the dangers facing Palestine have intensified to unprecedented levels. A brutal convergence of authoritarianism, corporate profiteering and unbridled imperial arrogance is under way.

Trump’s recent comment, echoing a previous statement by his son-in-law, that he wants to “just clean out” Gaza with the help of Jordan and Egypt is a clear indication that, like the most right-wing elements in Israel, he aspires to the complete destruction of Gaza as a Palestinian territory. His presentation of the land of an oppressed people, in the language of the real estate huckster, as a “phenomenal location on the sea” is utterly chilling.

Resistance within Palestine is preparing to hold firm. Palestinians are beginning the work of remaking homes from rubble. But under these conditions it is also vital that international solidarity with Palestine is intensified. Solidarity is required in the form of combined action by ordinary people, popular organisations and states.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign remains an essential tactic, as do actions like student occupations, dock workers refusing to offload ships carrying weapons, coal or fuel to Israel, and actions by states to force Israel to hold to international law.

Several states have already taken principled actions. South Africa charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January last year. In August last year, Namibia refused to allow a ship carrying military cargo to Israel to dock at its Walvis Bay port. Colombia stopped coal exports to Israel in June last year and expelled the Israeli ambassador in October. Along with Colombia, Bolivia, and Chile have also recalled their ambassadors from Israel.

But as we recently witnessed with Trump’s open and boorish intimidation of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, following Petro’s decision to deny landing rights to two US military aircraft carrying deported Colombian citizens, any country that stands up to the US alone remains vulnerable.

Trump’s thuggish response to Petro is part of a broader attempt by the US, with the backing of right-wing forces and governments elsewhere, to crush any assertion of political independence from the West, along with the spirit of principled multilateralism.

After South Africa charged Israel with genocide last year, the hysterically pro-Western part of the media at home went into howling attack mode. Naledi Pandor, at the time South Africa’s highly principled foreign minister, was vilified by these forces at home and attacked abroad. 

The ANC was repeatedly accused, with no evidence being provided, of having been bribed by Iran to take Israel to the ICJ. With barely veiled racism a principled position was misrepresented as a transactional, corruption-driven deal.

In February 2024, the South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act was introduced into the US Congress. It proposed to enforce a review of the relationship between the US and South Africa citing, among other claims, South Africa filing a “politically motivated and unfounded case” against Israel at the ICJ.

On 9 January this year, the US House of Representatives passed the “Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act” which aims to impose sanctions on individuals associated with the International Criminal Court who pursue investigations or prosecutions against US citizens or those of allied nations, such as Israel.

But there is also a countervailing move towards greater solidarity with Palestine and against imperialism. After its approach to the ICJ South Africa was less isolated and vulnerable after countries such as Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ireland, Mexico, Namibia and Spain joined its case. Tentative possibilities for a renewal of the spirit of internationalism began to emerge.

When the ICJ issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant on 21 November 2024 a clear international split was evident. Countries like Argentina, Austria, Hungary, Poland and the UK rushed to condemn the court. But a significant number of countries welcomed the actions of the court. There was an increasing sense that a critical mass of countries, mostly in the Global South, would not be intimidated into complicity with genocide.

In this context, the announcement on 31 January that nine countries had formed The Hague Group and committed to “coordinated legal, economic and diplomatic measures” against Israel is a significant advance in building global solidarity with Palestine.

The nine countries — Belize, Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa — have collectively agreed on a set of shared commitments. These are to uphold the arrest warrants issued against Israeli officials by the International Criminal Court; prevent the provision or transfer of arms, munitions and related equipment to Israel where there is a clear risk that they might be used to violate international law and prevent the docking of vessels at any of their ports where there is a risk of the vessel being used to carry military fuel and weaponry to Israel.

Ronald Lamola, South Africa’s minister of international relations and cooperation, has, like his predecessor Pandor, courageously taken a principled position on the question of Palestine. As he remarked: “The Hague Group’s formation marks a turning point in the global response to exceptionalism and the broader erosion of international law. It sends a clear message — no nation is above the law and no crime will go unanswered.”

Yvonne Dausab, Namibia’s minister of justice, has also been exemplary in her commitment to solidarity with Palestine. “The world cannot stand by and watch,” she said, “when we made a commitment more than 75 years ago, that never again shall the world suffer atrocities. We cannot be, and must not be, selective about protecting lives, regardless of who the victims are — all lives matter, Palestinian lives matter.”

There has always been a special bond between the liberation struggles in South Africa and Palestine, rooted in their shared experience of brutal settler colonial oppression. The defeat of Israel will require a similar triangulation of forces to those that defeated apartheid: the resistance of the Palestinian people, solidarity from ordinary people around the world and unified action by states willing to stand up to the West. 

The emerging bloc of African and Latin American countries, along with Malaysia, that have formed the Hague Group, must be expanded.

As Amilcar Cabral famously said: “We are not going to eliminate imperialism by shouting insults against it.” Imperialism can only be defeated by building solid forms of counter power and that requires solidarity between people, organisations and countries. The formation of the Hague Group is a moment to celebrate and to build on.

Ronnie Kasrils is a liberation struggle veteran and South Africa’s former minister of intelligence services. This is an edited version of the article first published in The Tribune (UK) and The Jacobin (US).