In urgent ICJ hearing, South Africa blasts Israel’s ‘explicit genocidal intent’

To keep readers orientated, tomorrow Israel gets an opportunity to rebut or bring details to the court.

From The Cradle:  https://thecradle.co/articles/in-urgent-icj-hearing-south-africa-blasts-israels-explicit-genocidal-intent
Pretoria made clear during the hearing that Israel has blatantly disregarded the previous ICJ ruling demanding that its army prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) held hearings on 16 May on South Africa’s request for additional emergency measures over Israel’s ongoing operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah.

South Africa’s new appeal calls for an urgent halt to Israeli attacks on Rafah, which is sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians. Pretoria presented its argument to the court on Thursday, and Israel is scheduled to present its own the following day.

As the hearing began, ICJ President Judge Nawaf Salam presented the details of the South African case and the provisional measures it has requested.

Vusi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, delivered the opening statement of his country’s delegation, thanking the court for scheduling the hearing for the “earliest possible date” in light of the “urgency of the situation” in Rafah. South Africa filed the application last week, on 10 May. Legal experts say the urgency with which the court date was set indicates that the ICJ is taking the matter seriously.

Madonsela added that South Africa has returned to the ICJ to “do what it can to stop the genocide” that has almost “knocked Gaza off the map [and] shocked the conscience of humanity.” Madonsela added that since the ICJ ruling in January, which ordered the Israeli military to prevent any genocidal acts in Gaza, Israel has “willfully breached the binding orders of the court” and escalated attacks against Palestinian civilians.

The severity of the situation demands “urgent and speedy proceedings to preserve the rights of the Palestinian people, a commitment that South Africa takes seriously.”

South Africa’s second representative at the ICJ, Vaughan Lowe, said that since South Africa’s latest request, “it has become increasingly clear that Israel’s actions in Rafah are part of the end game in which Gaza is utterly destroyed.”

“This is the last step in the destruction of Gaza and its Palestinian people. It was Rafah that brought South Africa to the court, but it is all Palestinians as a national ethnic and racial group who need the protection from genocide that the court can order,” he added.

Lowe also rejected Israel’s claims of acting in self-defense. “The prohibition on genocide is absolute,” he said, adding that a state’s self-defense does not extend to the territory it occupies and does not give that state a right to “unlimited violence.”

Another representative of the delegation, John Dugard, said world leaders repeatedly warned that an assault on Rafah would cause “forced and arbitrary evacuation of the already displaced Palestinians to even less hospitable parts of Gaza without adequate food, water, shelter and hospitals would have disastrous consequences,” adding that Israel “has not heeded this warning.”

Prior to the Israeli operation in Rafah, over a million Palestinians – most of whom displaced from other areas of Gaza – were residing in the city before Israel’s attack on 7 May forced hundreds of thousands to flee upwards towards the coastal area of Al-Mawasi.

Dozens of people have since been killed, including children, as a result of the bombing of the southernmost city.

Max Du Plessis of the South African delegation said the attack in Rafah shows clear “genocidal intent.”

South Africa made an urgent request in February for the court to consider whether Israel’s decision to launch an operation in Rafah “requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.”

The country had filed its case at the end of December, declaring that Israel was breaching obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in their military campaign in Gaza.

On 26 January, the ICJ ordered that Israel take steps to prevent acts of genocide by its military in Gaza and punish incitements to genocide.

The court, however, stopped short of ordering a ceasefire. South Africa had been aiming for an ICJ order of an emergency halt to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Any decision of the sort would need backing from the UN Security Council.