ICJ Begins Hearing Genocide Case Against Israel

The Hague: A continent away from the war in Gaza, South Africa, which has dragged Israel to court here accusing it of committing genocide against the Palestinians, pleaded with the United Nations’ top court on Thursday to order an immediate halt to war in Gaza.

Israel has shown “chilling” and “incontrovertible” intent to commit genocide in Gaza, with full knowledge of how many civilians it is killing, the ICJ, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, was told as it began hearings on a case brought by South Africa here.

The two-day hearing is the public side of a landmark case, one of the most significant to be heard in an international court and which goes to the heart of one of the world’s most intractable conflicts.

South African lawyers said during the opening arguments that the latest Gaza war is part of a decades long oppression of the Palestinians by Israel.

Amid Israel’s ongoing threemonth war in Gaza, more than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed, lawyers told the top United Nations court. Most of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced, and an Israeli blockade severely limiting food, fuel and medicine has caused a humanitarian “catastrophe”, according to the UN.

South Africa’s case in The Hague argues that Israel violated the 1948 genocide convention, established in the aftermath of the Holocaust, which mandates that all countries prevent the recurrence of such crimes. It filed an 84-page document with the court detailing acts it says amount to genocide in Gaza.

Adila Hassim, a lawyer representing South Africa, told the ICJ that Israel