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The announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is an important start on the road to peace in the Holy Land. It will enable the flow of aid to Gaza, that will begin to avert the immediate and severe humanitarian crisis.

But stopping the violence, freeing hostages and political prisoners, and facilitating humanitarian aid, without addressing the broader injustices of Israeli apartheid, illegal land occupations, and infrastructure destruction and genocide in Gaza, will not provide sustainable security for the people of Israel or Palestine.

Sustainable peace requires the equal dignity and human rights of Israelis and Palestinians to be upheld, Gaza to be re-built, and a viable independent Palestinian state to be created.

It requires the generational hatred and despair fuelled by the past 15 months of terror and inhumanity to be acknowledged in order for it to be addressed.

Justice and morality demand that those who invested in the destruction of Gaza, including Israel and its arms suppliers, pay for its repair.

As South Africa’s post-apartheid experience demonstrates, reconciliation without justice – without addressing historic inequalities and depredations, without accountability and redress – is tenuous because it is unfair.

We await the judgement of the International Court of Justice in respect of South Africa’s case of genocide against Israel.

It is our hope that, besides finding Israel’s strategies and tactics since October 2023 constituted genocide, the court provides clear direction on accountability and the reconstruction of Gaza.

Issued by GOOD secretary-general Brett Herron