APA-Pretoria (South Africa) South Africa’s Justice Minister Ronald Lamola has told 15 International Court of Justice (ICJ) judges hearing a genocide case against Israel at the Hague in the Netherlands that Tel Aviv has breached all acceptable norms of behaviour in its war against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in the past three months.
South Africa filed the case against Israel, accusing it of “genocidal acts” against the indiscriminate bombing of buildings and the killing of over 20,000 people in Gaza – mostly women and children since 7 October 2023.
Delivering his opening remarks ahead of his country’s delegation to the two-day ICJ hearings on Thursday, the minister said Israel’s response to attacks of last year in southern Israel had “crossed the line” and breached the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, also referred to as “the Genocide Convention.”
The convention defined genocide as acts such as killings “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” Lamola said.
He said Pretoria felt it was its responsibility to bring the case to the ICJ in efforts to get the court to stop the “genocide acts” being committed by Israel in its continued daily bloody attacks on Gaza that have claimed thousands of lives and injured many others under the convention.
He noted that the violence and destruction in Palestine and Israel did not begin on 7 October 2023.
“The Palestinians have experienced systemic oppression and violence for the last 76 years — on 6 October 2023 and every day since 7 October 2023,” he said.
He condemned the targeting of civilians by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups and the taking of over 200 Israeli and other hostages in October last year.
“That said, 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, breaches of the convention, whether as a matter of law or morality,” he said.
Therefore “Israel’s response to the 7 October 2023 attack has crossed this line and gives rise to breaches of the Convention,” the minister said.
NM/jn/APA