The International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, began hearings on Thursday in a case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
The hearings 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. Israel categorically denies the accusation.
The case was brought by South Africa, whose post-apartheid government has long supported the Palestinian cause. It accuses Israel of actions in Gaza against Hamas that are “genocidal in character.” It says Israel has killed Palestinian civilians, inflicted serious bodily and mental harm, and created for the residents of Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.”
More than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past three months, a majority of them women and children, according to health officials in Gaza. And 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.
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.
Israel, a signatory to the 1948 international Convention against Genocide, will present details of its defense in court. But Israeli leaders have said that South Africa’s allegations pervert the meaning of genocide and the purpose of the convention. A more fitting case, they say, could be brought against Hamas, an internationally labeled terrorist organization that is the target of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The court’s decisions are typically binding, though it has few means of enforcing them. In 2004, the court issued a nonbinding opinion that Israel’s construction of its security barrier inside the territory of the occupied West Bank was illegal and that it should be dismantled. Twenty years later, the system of walls and fences is still standing.
Israel’s military insists that it is prosecuting the war in line with international law. Officials point to the 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.
The death toll in Gaza, they say, is attributable in part to the use by Hamas of residential areas and civilian structures, including schools and hospitals, to launch attacks, store weapons and hide fighters.
To hear the Gaza case, the court’s regular 15-judge panel will be expanded to 17, with one additional judge appointed by each side. To fill those seats, Israel named Aharon Barak, a former president of its Supreme Court, and South Africa named Dikgang Moseneke, a former deputy chief justice of its Constitutional Court.
Israel’s legal team at The Hague will be led by Malcolm Shaw, a British expert chosen for his experience in litigation at the World Court. The South African team will be led by John Dugard, a highly regarded scholar of international law and a former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement, Hamas welcomed South Africa’s decision to bring the case, and called on “all countries to submit similar files and requests to competent national and international courts against this Nazi entity,” referring to Israel.
The United States, Israel’s most important ally, denounced South Africa’s petition. John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, described it as “meritless, counterproductive, completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”