South Africa files genocide case against Israel at World Court

Dec 29 (Reuters) - South Africa on Friday asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an urgent order declaring that Israel was in breach of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its war against the Palestinians in Gaza.

In Gaza, Israel has, in a merciless and relentless demonstration of genocidal strafe, killed at least 21,507 people  while 55,915 have been injured in Israeli attacks since October 7. The revised death toll from Hamas’s attack on Israel stands at 1,139.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the war in Gaza “is generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating warfare in the modern record”.

In a report published on Saturday, it confirmed that by mid-December Israel had dropped 29,000 bombs, munitions and shells on the besieged enclave, destroying or damaging nearly 70 percent of Gaza’s homes.

Israel’s bombardment of southern Gaza has intensified, with the Israeli army, navy and air force targeting multiple locations in Khan Younis and Rafah. Israel has hit residential areas and civilian infrastructure, resulting in a large number of deaths. According to the United Nations, between Thursday and Friday afternoon, 187 Palestinians were killed and 312 wounded in these attacks.

South Africa's filing alleged  that Israel was violating its obligations under the treaty, drafted in the wake of the Holocaust, which makes it a crime to attempt to destroy a people in whole or in part.

It asked the court to issue provisional, or short-term, measures ordering Israel to stop its military campaign in Gaza, which it said were "necessary in this case to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people."

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the United Nations venue for resolving disputes between states. 

While the ICJ in The Hague is considered the U.N.'s highest court, its rulings are sometimes ignored. In March 2022 the court ordered Russia to immediately halt its military campaign in Ukraine.

ISRAEL REJECTS FILING

In a first response to South Africa's suit, Israel's foreign ministry blamed Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by using them as human shields and stealing humanitarian aid from them, accusations Hamas denies.

"Israel has made it clear that the residents of the Gaza Strip are not the enemy, and is making every effort to limit harm to the non-involved," the ministry statement said.

Palestine, whose statehood is contested but is seen by the court as having "observer state" status, said it welcomed South Africa's suit.

"The court must immediately take action to protect the Palestinian people and call on Israel, the occupying power, to halt its onslaught," the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The court application is the latest move by South Africa, a critic of Israel's war, to ratchet up pressure after its lawmakers last month voted in favour of closing down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspending diplomatic relations.

In a statement from South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), the government said the application against Israel was filed on Friday.

"Israel, since 7 October 2023 in particular, has failed to prevent genocide and has failed to prosecute the direct and public incitement to genocide," DIRCO said in a statement.

South Africa has backed the Palestinian cause for statehood in Israeli-occupied territories for decades, likening the plight of Palestinians to those of the Black majority in South Africa during the repressive apartheid era, a comparison that Israel vehemently denies.

A different court in The Hague, the International Criminal Court (ICC), is separately investigating alleged atrocities in Gaza and the West Bank, but has not named any suspects. Israel, like the United States, is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction.

In the meantime, the spread of diseases in Gaza has reportedly increased, especially due to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people in the southern part of the enclave, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a report.

About 180,000 people have been diagnosed with upper respiratory infections, with more than 136,000 cases of diarrhoea recorded among the population, OCHA noted. At least 55,400 cases of lice and scabies and 5,330 cases of chickenpox have also been recorded.

Moreover, the OCHA said that only 13 out of 36 of Gaza’s hospitals were partially functional, nine of them in the south.

“The four hospitals that are partially functional in the north have been offering maternity, trauma, and emergency care services,” it said, adding that those facilities continue to face shortages of medical staff, surgeons and intensive care staff.

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