Extract from ABC News
Israel's military actions in Gaza are acts of self-defence against Hamas and "other terrorist organisations", the legal advisor for Israel's foreign ministry has said at the opening of the second day of hearings at the World Court.
Key points:
- Israel told the International Court of Justice that South Africa's accusations were "grossly distorted"
- South Africa has asked the judges to impose emergency measures ordering Israel to halt the offensive
- The ICJ's decisions are final and without appeal – but the court has no way to enforce them
The adviser, Tal Becker, said South Africa on Thursday had brought to the United Nations' top court "a grossly distorted story" as it accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
"If there were acts of genocide, they have been perpetrated against Israel," Mr Becker said.
"Hamas seeks genocide against Israel."
South Africa, which filed the lawsuit at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December, asked judges on Thursday to impose emergency measures ordering Israel to immediately halt the offensive.
It said Israel's aerial and ground offensive — which has laid waste to much of the narrow coastal enclave and killed more than 23,000 people according to Gaza health authorities — aimed to bring about "the destruction of the population" of Gaza.
Israel on Friday rejected the accusations of genocide as baseless.
It said South Africa was acting as a mouthpiece for Islamist Hamas, which is widely designated as a terrorist group in the West.
By asking the court to order the halt of the Gaza military operation "the applicant seeks to thwart Israel's inherent right to defend itself … and render Israel defenceless", he said.
Israel launched its all-out war in Gaza after a cross-border rampage on October 7 by Hamas militants in which Israeli officials said 1,200 people were killed, mainly civilians, and 240 taken hostage back to Gaza.
"The appalling suffering of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, is first and foremost the result of Hamas' strategy," Mr Becker said, adding that Israel had a right to defend itself.
Hamas denies Israeli allegations that its militants hide among civilians.
"Israel is in a war of defence against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people, to ensure that they do not succeed," Mr Becker said, adding: "The key component of genocide, the intent to destroy a people in whole or in part, is totally lacking."
Palestinian backers with flags marched through The Hague and planned to watch proceedings on a giant screen in front of the Peace Palace.
As Mr Becker spoke, they chanted: "Liar! Liar!"
Asked what she thought of Israel's arguments that the Gaza campaign was a matter of self-defence, Neen Haijjawi, a Palestinian who recently came to Netherlands said: "How can an occupier that's been oppressing people for 75 years say it's self-defence?"
Israeli supporters were holding a gathering of family members of hostages taken by Hamas.
The ICJ's decisions are final and without appeal — but the court has no way to enforce them.
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder 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 launched their offensive, nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes at least once, causing a humanitarian catastrophe.
"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 dehumanising comments about people in Gaza.
For many Palestinians, the charges represent a chance to bring world attention to what they see as Israel's historic suppression of their fundamental rights, and South African flags were flown in many cities in the West Bank.
"This is a test for humanity," said Bassam Zakarneh, a member of the Revolutionary Council of the Fatah movement that dominates the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self rule in the West Bank.
Post-apartheid South Africa has long advocated the Palestinian cause, a relationship forged when the African National Congress' struggle against white-minority rule was cheered on by Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation.
"My grandfather always regarded the Palestinian struggle as the greatest moral issue of our time," Mandla Mandela, a grandson of the late South Africa president Nelson Mandela, said at a rally in support of the Palestinians in Cape Town.
The court is expected to rule on possible emergency measures later this month, but will not rule at that time on the genocide allegations — those proceedings could take years.
Reuters
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