During its genocidal campaign in Gaza, Israel has repeatedly flouted the rulings of international courts. While Western states indulge Israeli impunity, a coalition of states backed by left-wing parties is spearheading action to hold Israel to account.
Representatives of nine Global South countries convened in the Hague last Friday to launch a coalition that will apply collective pressure on Israel over its gross violations of international law.
The founding members of the Hague Group include the governments of Belize, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal, and South Africa. Their initiative aims to establish a common platform to enforce “coordinated legal and diplomatic measures,” including sanctions, in retaliation for the Israeli state’s fifteen-month-long invasion of Gaza, its decades-old occupation of the West Bank, and its blocking of the creation of a Palestinian state.
“This is a group for collective action. Collective action at the national level, collective action at the international level, and collective action at the multilateral level,” said Varsha Gandikota-Nellutla of the Progressive International, which helped organize the coalition, at the January 31 launch event. “The Hague Group aims to build a bulwark to defend international law.”
The group hopes that other states could be willing to join their initiative, which seeks to defend and act upon the rulings against Israel and its political authorities by the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). They expect to make inroads among the vast majority of Global South nations that voted in favor of the United Nations General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and its latest war in Gaza. Figures from left-wing parties in Europe, such as France Insoumise, Ireland’s Sinn Féin, and the Workers’ Party of Belgium, also attended the launch.
Two weeks into the January 19 cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, the immediate goal of the Hague Group is to uphold recent international court orders against the Israeli state, just as Western powers undermine that legal architecture in the hope of returning to the prewar status quo in Israel-Palestine. Their common declaration also urges the enforcement of economic sanctions against Israel, first through an embargo on military exports and the refusal of ships trafficking military hardware to Israel to use their ports. This could provide the basis for other forms of economic coercion, said figures familiar with the initiative, although one initial goal is the creation of a big-tent framework.
The founding states in the Hague Group are already among the leading actors on the international stage taking direct action against Israel. Last June, Colombia ordered an embargo on all coal exports to Israel—a business worth over $300 million in 2023. South Africa was likewise the lead plaintiff in the December 2023 case filed with the ICJ over the Israeli military’s conduct in the then two-month-old war. Many of the Hague Group members, such as Belize, Colombia, Honduras, and Bolivia, suspended diplomatic relations with Israeli leadership over the latest invasion of Gaza.
“Global Credibility”
Israel faces a mounting docket of critical orders and indictments from international courts. In a January 2024 preliminary opinion on the South Africa case, the ICJ, a United Nations organ tasked with resolving conflicts between states and issuing advisory opinions on violations of international law, warned of the “plausible” risk of genocide in Gaza, ordering in May 2024 that Israel call off its offensive against the city of Rafah. The January 2024 opinion was issued at a time when Israel’s invasion was estimated to have killed twenty-six thousand Gazans; as of late January 2025, over forty-seven thousand people are known to have been killed as a result of the invasion and blockade, according to health authorities in the coastal enclave. That figure is rapidly on the rise as displaced Palestinians return to their prewar homes and communities.
In a July 2024 advisory opinion, the ICJ likewise recalled the illegality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. The court also deemed that third-party states had a legal obligation not to “render aid and assistance in maintaining the situation” in the occupied West Bank.
Last November, the ICC — the jurisdiction established in the late 1990s to try individuals accused of genocide and war crimes — authorized warrants for the arrest of Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense Yoav Gallant. The ICC also issued a warrant for the arrest of Mohammad Deif, the Hamas military commander who planned the October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that ignited the latest war. Last week, Hamas confirmed Deif’s death in a July 2024 Israeli air strike.
Western powers in Europe and North America have largely refused to stand by the rulings of the Hague-based courts and in some cases are moving to directly undermine them.
“What’s critical here is that states in the Global South are reappropriating international instruments that were originally conceived by the West,” Rima Hassan, a Franco-Palestinian jurist and Member of the European Parliament, told Jacobin. “Nobody should be above the law. That has to be the case even for the West’s ally and protégé, Israel.”
Among the European Union’s leading powers, Germany, France, and Italy have all announced that they would not enforce the ICC arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant. Paris stated that Israel’s status as nonsignatory to the ICC-founding Rome Statute meant that its leaders deserve immunity. The UN special rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, has pointedly rejected this evasion, saying it has no legal validity and recalling that preventing the enforcement a court-issued warrant violated Article 70 of the court’s founding treaty and could amount to “a criminal offense in itself.”
The ICC has claimed jurisdiction precisely because the crimes Netanyahu and Gallant are accused of committing have been carried out on internationally recognized Palestinian territory. Palestine acceded to the Rome Statute in 2015. Israel’s stance on the court therefore has no bearing on the validity of the case. Moreover, the French government did not apply that same logic when it came to its vocal support of the ICC warrants against Vladimir Putin over Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Last year, Poland initially expressed its willingness to enforce the ICC warrants against Netanyahu. In January, however, the Polish government backpedaled, promising protection for the Israeli premier in the event that he chose to attend last Monday’s memorial event commemorating the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. Netanyahu ultimately opted not to appear.
All twenty-seven member states of the EU are signatories of the Rome Statute, which obliges them to enforce court-ordered arrest warrants. But only a handful of states, such as Spain, Ireland, Belgium, and Norway — not a member of the EU — have stated that they would enforce the ICC warrants. Madrid, Oslo, and Dublin were also among the European capitals that recognized Palestinian statehood last spring.
As Europe’s leading powers refuse to uphold the system of international law they worked to establish, the United States — which is not a signatory to the ICC — is actively seeking to undermine and counterattack any criminal pursuits targeting Israeli state officials. “The ICC has done tremendous damage to its global credibility,” said Donald Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, during his confirmation hearings last month. “This is a test run to see if we can go after a head of state of a nation that’s not a member. If we can get Israel, they will apply that to the United States at some point.”
American power could soon be pressed into directly stifling the Hague court and actors enforcing its orders. Although Senate Democrats filibustered the recent Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, the bill to impose sanctions against the ICC was approved by the Republican-controlled House on January 9 with the support of forty-five Democratic representatives. The Trump White House could also soon consider executive action targeting the ICC, having reinstated a 2020 policy authorizing punitive measures against the court.
There’s nothing new about cutthroat US support for Israeli impunity. Europe’s inability to break from Washington on the question is yet another reminder of its lack of international leadership. In the face of rogue powers, the Hague Group is at least defending the idea of holding states to account for their actions.