Key Points
- South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
- Israel has rejected the accusations as baseless.
- The UN court heard South Africa's arguments on Thursday and will hear Israel's response to the allegations on Friday.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned South Africa's genocide case against Israel in Gaza as "hypocrisy and lies" as some Gazans returned to scenes of total devastation in the north of the enclave where Israeli forces have begun withdrawing.
Three months of Israeli bombardment have laid much of the coastal enclave to waste, killing more than 23,000 people and driving nearly the entire population of 2.3 million Palestinians from their homes.
An Israeli blockade has sharply restricted supplies of food, fuel, and medicine, creating what the United Nations describes as a humanitarian catastrophe.
Israel says its only means to defend itself is by eradicating Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza, whose fighters stormed through Israeli communities on 7 October, killing 1,200 people and capturing 240 hostages.
Israel blames Hamas for all subsequent harm to Palestinian civilians for operating among them, which the fighters deny.
The case, brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague, , enacted after the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust, which mandates all countries to ensure such crimes are never repeated.
"Israel has a genocidal intent against the Palestinians in Gaza," Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, advocate of the High Court of South Africa, told the court in the Hague.
"The intent to destroy Gaza has been nurtured at the highest level of state."
South Africa's delegation urged the International Court of Justice to order Israel to stop fighting. Source: AAP, SIPA USA / ANP
In a strongly worded response, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said "the hypocrisy of South Africa screams to the heavens".
"We are fighting terrorists, we are fighting lies... Today we saw an upside-down world. Israel is accused of genocide while it is fighting against genocide," he said.
Legal adviser to Israel’s Foreign Ministry Tal Becker at the ICJ hearing on Thursday. South Africa has accused Israel of violating the 1948 genocide convention amid the Gaza conflict. Source: AAP, EPA / Remko de Waal
In Rafah, in southern Gaza where the bodies of members of the al-Arjany family killed overnight were laid out outside a morgue, neighbour Khamis Kelab picked up the smallest of three children bundled in shrouds and cradled the dead infant in his arms.
"To the ICJ: what is the fault of this baby? What did this girl do? What crime did she commit? Was she a terrorist? Did this baby fire rockets?" he said.
"She was inside a tent, in the freezing cold, she was hit by a strike, this baby is just a few days old, you people."
A Palestinian man rides a donkey-pulled cart on Thursday near a destroyed building that was hit in an Israeli air strike, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Fighting has only intensified in southern areas. Source: Getty, AFP / -/AFP via Getty Images
Several European countries joined the United States in calling genocide accusations against Israel unjustified, not least given the ruthlessness of the Hamas attacks that precipitated the war.
But some developing states, including Brazil, backed South Africa, whose President Cyril Ramaphosa said his country was driven to bring the case by "the ongoing slaughter of the people of Gaza" and South Africa's own apartheid history.
Since the New Year, Israel has announced a new phase in the war, to begin drawing down forces in the northern half of the Gaza Strip where its offensive began.
Even so, fighting has only intensified in southern areas.
The relative quiet in the north has let residents begin trickling back into obliterated cities, finding a moonscape often with scant trace of where homes once stood.
Yousef Fares, a freelance journalist, filmed himself walking through a wasteland surrounded by scorched ruins that was once a part of Gaza City, home to nearly a million people.
A few civilians passed by, some wobbling on bicycles over a track across the mud.
"All the houses you see are destroyed, completely or partially," he said.
