Hague emergency meet plans ‘concrete measures’ on Israeli apartheid
Dozens of countries are expected to attend an emergency meeting of The Hague Group next week to announce “concrete measures” aimed at compelling Israel to end its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.
The Hague Group is a bloc of currently nine states, including Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Belize, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa. It was launched on January 31 with the goal of holding Israel accountable for its crimes against Palestinians.
In addition to the member states, a wide range of countries will take part in the July 15–16 gathering in Bogotá, Colombia. According to diplomats cited by the Middle East Eye on Thursday, these include Algeria, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Ireland, Lebanon, Nicaragua, Oman, Portugal, Spain, Qatar, Turkey, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Uruguay, and Palestine.
South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Roland Lamola, said the group’s formation marked a turning point in the “global response to exceptionalism and the broader erosion of international law.”
At the Bogota conference, the participants will emphasize that no crime will go unanswered, he added. “Together, we will work to introduce concrete legal, diplomatic and economic measures that can urgently halt Israel’s destruction of the Palestinians.”
Meanwhile, Colombia’s Vice Minister of Multilateral Affairs Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir said the Israeli genocide in Gaza threatens the multilateral system and that his country “cannot be indifferent in the face of apartheid and ethnic cleansing.”
“In Bogota, the assembled states will not only reaffirm our commitment to resist the genocide, but devise a series of specific measures to move from words to collective action,” he noted.
The meeting will be co-hosted by the governments of Colombia and South Africa as co-chairs of The Hague Group.
Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, will be among those attending the event.
Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla, the Hague Group’s coordinator said the bloc has been formed in part as a reaction to the non-compliance of states with binding legal obligations.
She was referring to the pushback by several Western countries against the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants issued for Israeli war criminals, and the usurping regime’s failure to comply with orders by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to prevent genocide in Gaza.
Hamas commends the formation of the “Hague Group” as an important step in ending the Israeli occupation.
Israel unleashed its brutal onslaught on the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
The Tel Aviv regime has so far failed to achieve its declared objectives of eliminating Hamas and freeing captives in Gaza, despite killing 57,762 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injuring 137,656 others.
