South Africa accused Israel on Thursday (January 11) of genocide in Gaza, and demanded that the U.N.'s top court order an emergency suspension of its devastating military campaign.
On the first of two days of hearings at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, South African advocates argued Israel's offensive aimed to bring about "the destruction of the population" of Gaza.
They pointed to three months of Israeli bombardment that has killed more than 23,000 people in the Palestinian enclave and made most Gazans homeless.
An Israeli blockade on supplies of food, fuel and medicine has also created what the United Nations describes as a humanitarian catastrophe.
Supporters of both the Palestinians and Israel protested outside the court, kept apart by police.
"...I expect the judges to order by law, right, and to call it what it is, it's a genocide against civilians in Gaza."
"If anybody did a genocide then it is Hamas..."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said hypocrisy and lies were presented to the court, and that Israel was fighting, quote, "murderous terrorists who carried out crimes against humanity."
Hamas, which rules Gaza, launched a cross-border attack on Israel on October 7. Israel says its militants killed 1,200 people and took 240 hostages.
South African advocates told the court that didn't justify what they said was Israel's breaching of the U.N.'s Genocide Convention.
This was Adila Hassim.
"The suffering of the Palestinian people, physical and mental, is undeniable. Turning to the third genocidal act under Article 2C, Israel has deliberately imposed conditions on Gaza that cannot sustain life and are calculated to bring about its physical destruction."
The preliminary hearings this week will consider whether the court should order Israel to stop fighting while it investigates the full merits of the case. The latter could take years.
The case reveals stark international polarization over Gaza. Several Western countries joined Washington in calling genocide accusations against Israel unjustified, not least given the ruthlessness of the Hamas attack.
At a camp for the displaced in Khan Younis, Gazan Nabila Abu Khater could barely follow the news for lack of electricity.
She has lost her mother and many other relatives in the strikes, and been displaced several times.
She called on the ICJ to find a solution.
"Every day there is killing, every day there is death, every day there is slaughter. Pressure Israel not to be at war. Are they human and we not human?"
Post-apartheid South Africa has long defended the Palestinian cause, a relationship forged during the African National Congress' struggle against white minority rule.
The ICJ's decisions are final and without appeal - but the court has no way to enforce them.
