South Africa has taken Israel to the United Nations’ highest court, accusing it of carrying out a state-sponsored genocide campaign to eliminate the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The lawsuit, filed at the International Court of Justice in December, urged the judges on Thursday to issue urgent measures to stop Israel’s offensive immediately.
South Africa claimed that Israel’s air and ground assault – which has devastated much of the narrow coastal strip and killed over 23,000 people, as per Gaza health officials – intended to bring about “the destruction of the population” of Gaza.
Israel dismissed the genocide allegations as unfounded.
It said South Africa was speaking for Islamist Hamas, which aims to destroy Israel and is widely regarded as a terrorist group in the West.
Israel started its full-scale war in Gaza after a cross-border attack on October 7 by Hamas fighters in which Israeli authorities said 1,200 people died, mostly civilians, and 240 were abducted to Gaza.
Palestinian supporters with flags paraded through The Hague and planned to view the proceedings on a huge screen outside the Peace Palace.
Israeli backers were holding a meeting of relatives of hostages taken by Hamas.
The ICJ’s rulings are final and binding – but the court has no power to enforce them.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, adopted after the mass killing of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
Since Israeli forces began their offensive, almost all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been displaced at least once, causing a humanitarian crisis.
Post-apartheid South Africa has long supported the Palestinian cause, a bond forged when the African National Congress’ fight against white-minority rule was applauded by Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation.
The court is expected to decide on possible emergency measures later this month.
The court will not decide at that time on the genocide charges – those proceedings could take years.
