South Africa's genocide case against Israel over Gaza begins at The Hague

3On Thursday, global attention focused on South Africa after it presented a historic case at the World Court, seeking a ruling on whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

South Africa urgently calls for a cessation of Israel’s military actions in Gaza to facilitate humanitarian aid for the displaced Palestinians, emphasizing its obligation under the UN Convention on Genocide to prevent mass atrocities.

It has lined up top-notch international legal experts to execute its case at the Peace Palace in The Hague. Leading the government’s legal argument is the renowned international law expert John Dugard. He is been joined by the former South African l Deputy Chief Justice, Dikgang Moseneke.

The two-day hearing is overseen by 15 permanent judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), with 13 countries endorsing South Africa's case.

President Donoghue and other judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) before the hearing of the genocide case against Israel, brought by South Africa. (Photo: RemoREMKO DE WAAL / ANP MAG / ANP via AFP)

South Africa is accusing Israel of "genocidal acts," "humanitarian crimes," and contributing to the 'ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people.'

In its opening statement to the court, South Africa has made this case against Israel:

South Africa has recognised the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people through Israel’s colonisation since 1948, which has systematically and forcibly dispossessed, displaced and fragmented the Palestinian people, deliberately denying them the internationally recognised inalienable right to self-determination and their internationally recognised rights of return as refugees to their towns and villages in what is now the state of Israel.

We are also particularly mindful of Israel’s institutionalised regime of discriminatory laws, policies and practices designed and maintained to establish domination, subjecting the Palestinian people to apartheid on both sides of the Green Line

Decade-long impunity for widespread and systematic human rights violations has emboldened Israel in its recurrence and intensification of humanitarian crimes in Palestine.

At the outset, South Africa acknowledges that the genocidal acts and omissions by the state of Israel inevitably form part of a continuum of illegal acts perpetrated against the Palestinian people since 1948.

The application places Israel’s genocidal acts and omissions within the broader context of Israel’s 25-year apartheid, 56-year occupation and 16-year siege imposed on the Gaza Strip.

This morning, Adila Hassim, a high court advocate from South Africa, started the proceedings by presenting evidence of Israel's mass killings of Palestinians. She outlined what she said were Israeli acts that were in violation of articles 2b and 2c of the genocide convention:

Israel’s attacks have left close to 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of them women and children. This is in circumstances where the healthcare system has collapsed.

Large numbers of Palestinian civilians, including children, are arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress and loaded onto trucks taken to unknown locations. The suffering of the Palestinian people, physical and mental is undeniable.

Israel has deliberately imposed conditions on Gaza that cannot sustain life and are calculated to bring about its physical destruction … by displacement. Israel has forced –the displacement of about 85 per cent of Palestinians in Gaza.

There is nowhere safe for them to flee to Israel’s first evacuation order on 13 October required the evacuation of over one million people including children, the elderly, the wounded, and infirm.

The order itself was genocidal. It required immediate movement, taking only what could be carried while no humanitarian assistance was permitted. And fuel, water, food and other necessities of life had deliberately been cut off. It was clearly calculated to bring about the destruction of the population.

In schools, in hospitals, in mosques, in churches, and as they tried to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, killed in the places to which they have fled, and even killed while they attempted to flee along Israeli declared safe routes.

The level of killing is so extensive that those whose bodies are found are buried in mass graves, often unidentified.

In the first three weeks alone, following 7 October, Israel deployed 6,000 bombs per week. At least 200 times it has deployed 2000lb bombs in southern areas of Palestine designated as safe.

These bombs have also decimated the north, including refugee camps. 2000lb bombs are some of the biggest and most destructive bombs available.

Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians. With the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take.

More than 1,800 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members and hundreds of multigenerational families have been wiped out with no remaining survivors. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, cousins, often all killed together.