Israeli legal advisor Tal Becker told a packed auditorium at the ornate Palace of Peace in The Hague that the country is fighting a “war it did not start and did not want.”
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Accused of committing genocide against Palestinians,
South Africa says this amounts to genocide and is part of decades of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
“The scale of destruction in Gaza, the targeting of family homes and civilians, the war being a war on children, all make clear that genocidal intent is both understood and has been put into practice. The articulated intent is the destruction of Palestinian life,” said lawyer Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, adding that several leading politicians had made dehumanizing comments about people in Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry welcomed the case, saying in a written statement that South Africa “delivered unequivocal evidence that Israel is deliberately and systematically violating its obligations under the Genocide Convention.”
Malcolm Shaw, an international law expert on Israel’s legal team, rejected the accusation of genocidal intent and called the remarks Ngcukaitobi referenced “random quotes not in conformity with government policy.”
Israel also says that it takes measures to protect civilians, such as issuing evacuation orders ahead of strikes. It blames Hamas for the high civilian death toll, saying the group uses residential areas to stage attacks and for other military purposes.
Israel’s critics say that such measures have done little to prevent the high toll and that its bombings are so powerful that they often amount to indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks.
If the court issues an order to halt the fighting and Israel doesn’t comply, it could face U.N. sanctions, although those may be blocked by a veto from the United States, Israel’s staunch ally. In Washington, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby called the allegations “unfounded.” The White House declined to comment on how it might respond if the ICJ determines Israel has committed genocide.
The extraordinary case goes to the core of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts — and for the second day protesters rallied outside the court.
Pro-Israeli demonstrators set up a table near the court grounds for a Sabbath meal with empty seats, commemorating the hostages still being held by Hamas. “We want to symbolize the empty chairs, because we are missing them,” said Nathan Bouscher from Center for Information and Documentation on Israel.
Nearby, over 100 pro-Palestinian protesters waved flags and shouted protests.
The case also strikes at the heart of both Israel’s and South Africa’s national identities.
Israel was founded as a Jewish state in the wake of the Nazis’ slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II. South Africa’s governing party, meanwhile, has long compared Israel’s policies in Gaza and the West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Black people to “homelands.”
The world court, which rules on disputes between nations, has never judged a country to be responsible for genocide. The closest it came was in 2007, when it ruled that Serbia “violated the obligation to prevent genocide” in the July 1995 massacre by Bosnian Serb forces of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.
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