Obody is safe in Gaza,’ Irish lawyer tells Hague
AN IRISH lawyer presenting South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide has told The Hague that ‘nobody is safe’ in Gaza.
Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh told judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the ‘horror of the genocide against the Palestinian people’ was being live-streamed around the world in real time. She said the international community had failed the Palestinian people, who were broadcasting their own destruction ‘in the desperate, so far, vain hope that the world might do something’.
Ms Ní Ghrálaigh, an award-winning barrister with expertise in international human rights law, said there was a need for urgent provisional measures to order the Israeli military to halt its operations in Gaza.
She said the measures were required to ‘protect Palestinians in Gaza from the irreparable prejudice caused by Israel’s violations of the Genocide Convention’.
Under the 1948 UN convention, genocide is defined as acts committed ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’.
Ms Ní Ghrálaigh, of Matrix Chambers in London, said: ‘The United Nations secretary-general and its chiefs describe the situation in Gaza variously as a crisis of humanity, a living hell, a bloodbath, a situation of utter, deepening and unmatched horror where an entire population is besieged and under attack, denied access to the essential for survival on a massive scale.’
Arguing the case before ICJ judges, she said some might say that the ‘very reputation of international law... hangs in the balance’ as to whether the court would grant the provisional measures. Israel’s ambassador to Ireland, Dana Erlich, said that the South African case was ‘absurd’ and reiterated comments made previously that Hamas was the target of the Israeli government.
‘Broadcasting their own destruction’