In a historic appearance before the International Court of Justice (ICJ or World Court) in The Hague, the legal team representing the Republic of South Africa presented a powerful and compelling case that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. South Africa asked the court to impose nine emergency “provisional measures” to stop the slaughter.

South Africa “unequivocally condemned the targeting of civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and the taking of hostages on 7 October,” South African ambassador to the Netherlands Vusimuzi Madonsela said. But, he added, “no armed attack on a State’s territory no matter how serious — even an attack involving atrocity crimes — can provide any justification for, or defence to” genocide. Israel, he said, “has crossed this line.”

Israel responded that it was one of the first states to ratify the Genocide Convention and for Israel, the promise of “Never Again” is “the highest moral obligation.” Israel’s position is that Hamas is responsible for the situation in Gaza and it accused South Africa of an “attempt to weaponize the term genocide.”

Genocide “stands alone amongst the violations of international law as the epitome and zenith of evil. It has been described correctly as the ‘crime of crimes,’ the ultimate in wickedness,” professor and U.K. lawyer Malcolm Shaw argued on behalf of Israel. Shaw said that Israel has the “most moral army in the world” and “does everything to avoid harming the uninvolved.”

Israel has engaged in a “systematic pattern of conduct from which genocide can be inferred,” South African attorney Adila Hassim told the court. Israel is subjecting Gazans to “one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare” from air, land and sea. “The level of Israel’s killing is so extensive that nowhere is safe in Gaza,” she said, citing a recent statement by the UN secretary general. “Israel has killed an ‘unparalleled and unprecedented’ number of civilians, with the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take.” She added, “The devastation, we submit, is intended to and has laid waste to Gaza beyond any acceptable legal, let alone humane, justification.”

“Wherever they go,” Palestinians in Gaza “are subjected to relentless bombing,” Hassim stated. “They are killed in their homes, in places where they seek shelter, in hospitals, in schools, in mosques, in churches and as they try to find food and water for their families. They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, in the places to which they have fled and even while they attempted to flee along Israeli declared ‘safe routes.’” Israel has forcibly displaced about 85 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza.

More than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed in the last three months, the overwhelming majority of them civilians. Nearly 60,000 Palestinians have been wounded and maimed, the majority women and children.

Hundreds of multigenerational families have been obliterated. The deliberate killing is the “destruction of Palestinian life,” Hassim said. “No one is spared, not even newborn babies. The scale of Palestinian child killings in Gaza is such that United Nations chiefs have described it as ‘a graveyard for children.’”

Israel deliberately cut off fuel, water and food to Gaza. “It was clearly calculated to bring about the destruction of the population,” Hassim stated. Israel has destroyed or damaged about 355,000 Palestinian homes and at least half a million Palestinians have no home to return to. An “unprecedented 93 percent of the population in Gaza is facing crisis levels of hunger,” she added. “Of all the people in the world currently suffering catastrophic hunger, more than 80 percent are in Gaza.” Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s health care system “renders life unsustainable.”

In addition, Israel is “imposing measures intended to prevent births” among the Palestinians, Hassim said. “Israel is blocking the delivery of life-saving aid, including essential medical kits for delivering babies, in circumstances where an estimated 180 women are giving birth in Gaza each day.”

Israel did not contest South Africa’s casualty figures. It claimed that while Hamas’s strategy is to “maximize civilian harm to both Israelis and Palestinians,” Israel “seeks to minimize” civilian harm.

Tal Becker, a legal adviser for Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the court that Hamas has “a practice of stealing and hoarding aid.” But Becker claimed there are “extensive Israeli efforts to mitigate civilian harm” and “humanitarian initiatives being undertaken to enable the flow of supplies and provide medical attention to the wounded.”

Becker maintained that “Israel is in a war of defense against Hamas — not against the Palestinian people — to ensure that they do........

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