listen to this article7 minutes
information
In a post from its official X account yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a message to the Hague Group. The Hague Group, a growing coalition of sovereign states including South Africa, Colombia and Malaysia, is convening an emergency meeting in The Hague to discuss international law enforcement and responsibility for actions in Gaza. Israel’s Foreign Ministry posted an image of the 40 countries gathered, along with a photo of thick black smoke billowing from the targeted Iranian ship, which sank earlier in the day. “The outcome of the Hague talks can be expected to be as successful as the Iranian Navy,” the caption read in part.
The post was published on an official government account and has not yet been withdrawn. It refers to active military operations. In announcing the airstrikes, President Trump told Iranians that once the bombings were over, the government would “become yours.”
In that context, juxtaposing sinking warships with images of diplomats and experts is much more than an abstract provocation. Comparisons are made between military targets and participants in the International Law Compliance Conference.
The Hague Group represents a significant shift in Global South diplomacy. Established on January 31, 2025, by eight core states: Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, Malaysia, Namibia, Senegal and South Africa, it has the express mandate of coordinating state actions to enforce interim measures of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The Union clearly frames what it is doing as complying with, rather than departing from, existing international legal frameworks. In contrast, Israel responded by likening the diplomatic conference to a military target. The choice of response itself becomes clear. This reflects a disdain for the process, the participants, and the assumption that legal liability applies equally to all states.
Far from being the isolated “fringe” group that Israel portrayed in its post, the Hague Group’s influence had expanded significantly by March 2026, with 40 countries meeting to discuss concrete measures to ensure the enforcement of international law, including European countries such as Spain and Norway, as well as G20 members such as Brazil and Saudi Arabia.
In the final statement of the emergency meeting on March 4, the 40 countries in attendance proposed comprehensive concrete measures to move “from rhetoric to action.” This includes a complete ban on the import of imported plant materials and a halt to the transfer or shipment of all weapons, military fuel, and munitions to Israel. Significant new measures included the introduction of disclosure requirements for travelers using Israeli documents. Individuals who have served in the Israeli military may now be subject to “secondary inspections at ports of entry” under the country’s war crimes ban. The group stressed that these measures are necessary to fulfill the “obligations of third countries” as determined in the ICJ Advisory Opinion of July 2024. They argued that the state must actively prevent any assistance that sustains illegal occupations.
A tweet from Israel’s Foreign Ministry accused the coalition of being a “corrupt regime” united by “hatred.” But the group’s legal status is tied to a history that Israel cannot so easily ignore.
At the height of South Africa’s apartheid era, when the world was beginning to isolate the white minority government in Pretoria, Israel remained one of its staunchest allies. This was a deep strategic partnership involving nuclear cooperation and advanced military technology. The very instruments of state violence that maintain apartheid were often developed or refined in conjunction with Israeli expertise. Evidence of this alliance includes the widely documented 1979 “Vera Incident.” The incident is believed to be a joint nuclear weapons test conducted by Israel and South Africa in the South Atlantic, circumventing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
This history does not settle the legal question before the ICJ. However, it complicates Israel’s current coalition framework. The countries now seeking enforcement of international law are, in some cases, the same countries that have spent decades with Israeli-backed impunity.
The current moment adds to the irony of history. The Feb. 28 airstrike on Iran drew new attention to the Pahlavi dynasty’s heir, Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, who thanked President Donald Trump for an “attack on a big regime” that he called a “humanitarian intervention.” In April 2023, on an official visit to Israel organized by Israel’s Minister of Information, Pahlavi spoke of rekindling the “ancient bonds” between the Israeli and Iranian peoples and promoted the “Cyrus Accord” to re-establish relations between the two.
Under his father’s rule, Iran was one of apartheid South Africa’s most important economic partners. By 1978, Iran supplied more than 90 percent of South Africa’s oil imports, neutralizing the Arab oil embargo that had been one of the international community’s main pressure tools against Pretoria. Shah’s father died in exile in Johannesburg in 1944.
It is precisely this history, a history of selectively enforced legal frameworks and international isolation that applies to some countries but not others, that the Hague Group seeks to address. The Hague Group’s March 4 statement points to what that history points to: the choice states face between complicity and compliance.
The group warned that if countries do not act now to “put the brakes on international law”, the legal framework governing the world order “will no longer be worth the paper it is written on”. Indeed, if Israel and its allies evaluate the outcome of talks, defined by compliance with international law, in terms of the “success” of the bombed ship, the very concept of international law is already under fire.
There is no more urgent time than now to hold accountable those who set the rules-based order on fire.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
