Nicaragua To Raise Its Voice For Palestine In Another Landmark Case

Nicaragua To Raise Its Voice For Palestine In Another Landmark Case Becca Renk Foster, Popular Resistance. Nicaragua Condemns Attacks. “Nicaragua expresses its unchanging solidarity with the heroic Palestinian people, who continue to face suffering, occupation, destruction and displacement perpetrated by the Zionist government of Israel and its occupying forces,” reads a statement from Nicaragua’s government released on July 29th. The declaration condemned Israel’s renewed attacks, calling them an “unacceptable escalation of violence against the Palestinian people,” and repudiated “the continuous, growing violations of international and humanitarian law, as well as Israel’s attempts to criminalize the Palestinian population who seek only to protect their families, homes and livelihoods.” This statement is Nicaragua’s most recent demonstration of solidarity with Palestine in its long history of friendship with the Palestinian people: Nicaragua was the first Central American country to establish diplomatic ties with Palestine. In 1980, just one year after the triumph of the Sandinista Popular Revolution, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat made an historic visit to Nicaragua which marked the beginning of diplomatic relations between the State of Palestine and the Republic of Nicaragua. Nicaragua Leads South-South Solidarity From that time, the two countries have maintained friendship which has strengthened since the Israeli genocide in Gaza began. On the global stage, Nicaragua has been at the forefront of the south-south mobilization of support for Palestine: reaffirming solidarity with Palestine on October 7, 2023; sending its foreign minister to Ramallah to meet with Palestinian authorities in December 2023; signing on in February 2024 as the first of 18 countries to intervene on behalf of South Africa in its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ); and on March 1, 2024, bringing charges against Germany at the ICJ for aiding and abetting genocide by providing political, financial and military support to Israel and by defunding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Nicaragua’s pressure on Germany at the World Court has already leveraged positive results for Palestine: as of April 2024, Germany reversed its policy on stopping UNRWA funding to Gaza and declared it has resumed aid. This past March, Germany’s foreign ministry announced it was withdrawing support for Israel in the South Africa case in order to focus on its defense in the legal proceedings initiated by Nicaragua. Nicaragua v. United States Nicaragua, a country the size of New York state with a population of just under seven million people, is one of the countries in the world with the most experience in the ICJ. In fact, in 1986 the World Court ruled in Nicaragua’s favor in a landmark case against the United States over the Contra War. Immediately following the ousting of U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza by young Sandinista revolutionaries in 1979, the U.S. created, financed and directed a “counterrevolutionary” force known as the contras. W