Israel on trial in U.N. court on genocide charge
Palestinians cheered by legal case brought by South Africa against Jewish state in Gaza war
Ramallah, West Bank — Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem spent Thursday captivated by the proceedings in a faraway courtroom, closely following the first hearing in an unprecedented case brought by South Africa that accuses Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Friends and family gathered before screens in living rooms and local coffee shops to watch the opening statements at the top United Nations court, located in the Netherlands. Cab drivers used their phones between shifts to tune into the International Court of Justice’s livestream from The Hague.
Televisions typically filled with images of bloodshed and destruction in Gaza instead broadcast foreign lawyers and judges holding forth in lofty halls. In at least one cafe in the West Bank city of Ramallah, some cheered as they watched South Africa’s justice minister expound on the decades-long “systematic oppression and violence” of Palestinians. Others wept.
“I am amazed at the fact that the international community is trying to hold Israel accountable,” Assalah Mansour, a 25-year-old lawyer, said from the northern West Bank city of Nablus. The hearing in The Hague was the talk of the town Thursday, she said.
“For the first time, I felt like this case restored the Palestinian people’s hope in the international community,” Mansour said.
Israel has vehemently denied the genocide allegations and has chosen to defend itself, in person, for the first time, attesting to the case’s symbolic importance. South Africa is seeking binding preliminary orders to compel Israel to stop its current military campaign in Gaza.
Israel declared war on Hamas, the group that rules Gaza, after thousands of militants launched a surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages. The war has killed more than 23,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
No matter the outcome of the lengthy judicial process, Palestinians hailed Thursday’s hearing as a watershed moment for a population that felt forgotten by world powers and betrayed by its own leaders throughout decades of suffering abuses under Israeli occupation.
Since Israel seized the West Bank and Gaza in a 1967 war, Palestinians have endured land-seizing Israeli settlements, army raids on their homes, restrictions on their movements, bars to using their own natural resources and military courts — all entrenching a feeling that the world’s hand-wringing about human rights doesn’t apply to them.
“Even if nothing comes out of this, the sheer fact that the whole world is listening to our story is a victory,” Marwan Mohammed, a coffee shop owner in al-Bireh, a town abutting Ramallah, said.