Palestinian children inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on December 29, 2023. (via Reuters)

The British government has been accused of double standards after submitting detailed legal arguments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to support claims that Myanmar has committed genocide, but refraining from doing the same in the case of Israel.

In late December, South Africa started proceedings against Israel at the ICJ over the regime’s genocidal war on Gaza, which has so far killed nearly 23,000 Palestinians. 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.

In early January, it was announced that the ICJ’s judges in The Hague will hear South Africa’s case against Israel 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.

While the UK made a 21-page declaration of intervention in the case of Myanmar’s genocide against the Rohingya ethnic group jointly with five other countries, it is not supporting South Africa as it prepares to convince the ICJ that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Israel has said it will defend itself at the UN court, claiming that it only seeks to destroy the Hamas resistance movement, not the Palestinian people.

According to a Sunday report by The Guardian, Tayab Ali, the head of international law at Bindmans law firm, says the significance of the UK submission on Myanmar lay in showing the importance the UK attaches to adherence to the UN Genocide Convention and in showing the UK took a wide, and not a narrow, definition of acts of genocide and the intent to commit genocide.

It would be wholly disingenuous if the UK, six weeks after advancing such a significant and broad definition of genocide in the case of Myanmar, now adopts a narrow one in the case of Israel, he added.

While the UK submission on Myanmar highlights the importance of children in assessing a genocide, when it comes to Israel, London ignores that nearly 10,000 children and babies have been killed in Gaza, accounting for about 40 percent of the fatalities, the report said.

According to a leak to the US news website Axios, Israel has already ordered its diplomats to build international opposition to the South African case by pointing out that an adverse ruling could have significant ... practical bilateral, multilateral, economic and security ramifications.

The Israeli regime is also taking steps to disassociate itself from some of the more extreme remarks about displacing Palestinians from Gaza made by its ministers and other officials.