Germany has stepped away from supporting Israel in its defense against genocide allegations at the International Court of Justice, saying it will instead focus on separate legal proceedings brought against Berlin.
"We are now ourselves a party to contentious proceedings before the ICJ and have consequently decided not to make use of this option [of intervening]," private broadcaster n-tv cited Josef Hinterseher, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, as saying.
The German government intends instead to focus on the legal proceedings initiated by Nicaragua which filed a lawsuit against Germany before the ICJ in the spring of 2024, he added.
South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel in December 2023 at the highest court of the U.N.
In January 2024, Berlin rejected South Africa's claims as "baseless", saying they amounted to "political instrumentalization" of the 1948 Genocide Convention, a treaty that outlined the crime under international law in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Germany announced at that time it would file an intervention on Israel's behalf.
