Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 12th Jan. South Africa on Thursday addressed the International Criminal Court in Hague called Israel to end the mass killing of civilians in Gaza, accused the Jewish State of carrying out genocide against Palestinians there a claim that Israel has strongly denied as “baseless”.
The development came after the ongoing and massive Israeli bombardment across the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian terrorist group Hamas-led terror attacks on 7 October that left some 1,200 Israeli and foreign nationals dead in southern Israel and some 250 taken hostage.
South African laid out its case and its legal team told the International Court of Justice that Israel had demonstrated a “pattern of genocidal conduct” since the full-scale war in Gaza.
The court was told that “This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. It is inflicted deliberately, no-one is spared, not even newborn babies” .
Adila Hassim South African lawyer stressed that Israel’s actions had subjected the 2.3 million people of Gaza to an unprecedented level of attacks from the air, land and sea, resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians and the destruction of homes and essential public infrastructure.
She alleged Israel had also prevented sufficient humanitarian aid from reaching those in need and created the risk of death by starvation and disease because of the impossibility of providing assistance “while bombs fall”.
Ms. Hassim noted that “Palestinians in Gaza are subject to relentless bombing wherever they go,” Ms. Hassim told the court, adding that so many people had been killed that they were often buried unidentified in mass graves. An additional 60,000 Palestinians had been wounded and maimed.
“They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches, and as they tried to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they have failed to evacuate the places to which they have fled and even if they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes.”
South Africa alleged that 6,000 bombs hit Gaza in the first week of the Israeli response to the Hamas-led attacks. This included the use of 2,000-pound bombs at least 200 times “in southern areas of the Strip that were designated as safe”, and in the north, where refugee camps were located, Ms. Hassim said.
She said these weapons were “some of the biggest and most destructive bombs available”.
Ms. Hassim added that genocides “are never declared in advance, but this court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that showed incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts”.
ICJ judges told in reference to the global treaty inked by Members of the UN after the Second World War to prevent crimes against humanity and it It was because of these actions that Israel had contravened the Genocide Convention.
John Dugard, represented South Africa said that the Convention was “dedicated to saving humanity”, and all countries that had signed up to the Convention “are obliged not only to desist from genocidal acts but also to prevent them”.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk has defended criticism of the invasion of Gaza, stated that it is “not antisemitic” to call out “gross violations” of international humanitarian law.
He wrote in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Volker Türk has strongly condemned “the shocking cruelty of the attack launched from Gaza by Hamas and other armed groups on October 7”.
Volker said that the massacres that ensued created “intense and continuing trauma” across Israel”, , before insisted that the country’s “campaign of overwhelming force” had been “tainted by grave breaches of international law”.
Mr. Türk noted rocket fire from Gaza into Israel and expressed regret that some Israeli officials had tried to discredit his Office’s concerns by claiming that they constitute “blood libel”.
“It is not a blood libel to deplore the failure to hold to account Israeli soldiers and armed settlers who have killed hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7, or the prolongation of a war whose conduct has raised grave international humanitarian and human rights law concerns,”Turk stressed.
The Council members in New York seeking more consensus over the Israel Palestine crisis, passing a resolution in the Security Council Thursday night to contain the spillover from the Gaza war.
They demanded that Houthi rebels on the Red Sea coast of Yemen end their attacks on international shipping, which the rebels say are in support of Palestinians and Hamas militants.
Security Council will meet to discuss concerns over the potential forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza, at the request of new Council member, Algeria.
