The government of Bolivia says it will join South Africa in a legal case filed against the Israeli regime in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for committing genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
The Palestinian Information Center quoted Bolivia’s Foreign Ministry as making the announcement in a statement on Monday.
According to the statement, La Paz lauded the step taken by Pretoria in this regard in line with its commitment to the UN Genocide Convention.
Bolivia added that the judicial measure taken by South Africa in filing the lawsuit was a “historic step” in defense of the rights of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian cause of liberation from Israeli occupation and aggression.
The Bolivian Foreign Ministry also called on the international community to throw its full weight behind this initiative.
It noted that the country has, together with South Africa, Bangladesh, Comoros, and Djibouti, presented a separate request to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the situation in Palestine.
Bolivia is the first country in Latin America to announce its support of South Africa’s lawsuit.
In late December, South Africa started proceedings against Israel at the ICJ over the regime’s genocide in Gaza. 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.”
“The acts in question include killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, and inflicting on them conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction,” the lawsuit says.
In early January, it was announced that the ICJ judges in The Hague will hear South Africa’s case against Israel on January 11 and 12 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.
More than 23,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed and nearly 59,000 injured during the Israeli genocidal war on Gaza.
