South Africa on Thursday began laying out its case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, arguing at the International Court of Justice that while Hamas committed atrocities during its Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, the scale of Israel’s military response was not justified.
As a two-day hearing at the court began, South Africa’s justice minister, Ronald Lamola, said that the Israeli military offensive in Gaza had violated the international convention against genocide and created for the residents of Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”
“Even an attack involving atrocity crimes cannot provide any justification for or defense to breaches of the convention, whether as a matter of law or morality,” Mr. Lamola said. Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attacks, he said, “has crossed this line.”
Israel, which will present its defense on Friday, categorically denies the genocide accusation and insists it is conducting the war in line with international law.
The hearings at the court, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, are the first time that Israel has chosen to defend itself in person in such a setting, attesting to the gravity of the indictment and the high stakes for the country’s international reputation and standing.
The case was brought by South Africa, whose post-apartheid government has long supported the Palestinian cause. It accuses Israel of actions in Gaza that are “genocidal in character,” following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks that killed about 1,200 people and led to about 240 being taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
In response, Israel’s airstrikes and ground invasion have killed more than 23,000 Palestinians over the past three months, a majority of them women and children, according to health officials in Gaza, who do not distinguish between the deaths of Hamas militants and those of civilians. Most of the enclave’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced since the war began, increasing the danger of disease and hunger, according to international organizations.
Adila Hassin, the first of several South African attorneys who on Thursday morning laid out the case against Israel, described Israeli military airstrikes and evacuation orders that have resulted in widespread displacement, the spread of infectious disease and a lack of food and clean water that United Nations agencies say have forced Gazans into extreme hunger.
“Nowhere is safe in Gaza,” Ms. Hassin said. “The situation is such that the experts are now predicting that more Palestinians in Gaza may die from starvation and disease than airstrikes.”
South Africa’s allegation is laden with a particular significance in Israel, a country founded in the wake of the near wholesale destruction of European Jewry and that soon after became a haven for Jews expelled by the hundreds of thousands from Arab lands. The hearings were broadcast live on most of Israel’s television channels on Thursday.
Israeli leaders have said that South Africa’s allegations pervert the meaning of genocide and the purpose of the 1948 genocide convention, to which it is a signatory. They point to millions of messages, sent by various means, telling Gaza’s civilians to evacuate to safer areas ahead of bombings, and say they are constantly working to increase the amount of aid entering Gaza.
A more fitting case of genocide, Israeli leaders argue, could be brought against Hamas, an internationally labeled terrorist organization that is the target of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
