South Africa accuses Israel of apartheid and genocide in Gaza

The International Court of Justice was told Israel has breached UN Genocide Convention in its efforts to destroy Hamas after October 7 massacres.

Demonstrators outside the Western Cape High Court in Cape Town ahead of the South African government’s genocide case against Israel. Picture: Reuters/The Times

South Africa has called on the International Court of Justice to order Israel to stop the war in Gaza, as the country presented a case accusing Israel of genocide.

Lawyers told the United Nations’ highest court in The Hague that Israel’s military campaign had breached the UN Genocide Convention, saying that even the October 7 attack by Hamas could not justify such actions.

“South Africa contends that Israel has transgressed article two of the convention, committing acts that fall within the definition of genocide. The actions show a systematic pattern of conduct from which genocide can be inferred,” said Adila Hassim, an acting judge in South Africa’s high court.

South Africa filed the lawsuit last month in an attempt to obtain an emergency ruling to end the war, amid growing calls for a permanent ceasefire given the thousands of casualties and widespread destruction in Gaza.

Israel has rejected the accusations of genocide as baseless and accused Pretoria of playing “advocate of the devil” for Hamas. Its lawyers will set out their defence on Friday.

President Donoghue and other judges at the International Court of Justice before the hearing. Picture: EPA/The Times

The court may take weeks to issue a preliminary order, and its decisions cannot be enforced. Its ruling on the accusation of genocide may take years.

Israel began the war after Hamas gunmen in Gaza raided Israeli towns on October 7, killing 1200 Israelis and kidnapping more than 200. Israel’s retaliation has destroyed or damaged much of Gaza and killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans have been displaced.

Vaughan Lowe, one of the lawyers assembled by South Africa, argued Israel could not claim its actions in Gaza were justified by self-defence. “No matter how monstrous or appalling an attack or provocation, genocide is never a permitted response,” he said.

“South Africa believes that the publicly available evidence from the scale of destruction resulting from the … bombardment of Gaza … demonstrates that the government of Israel – not Jewish people or Israeli citizens: the government of Israel and its military – is intent on destroying the Palestinians in Gaza as a group.”

South Africa and Israel are both parties to the 1948 Genocide Convention, which obliges them not to commit genocide and also to prevent and punish it.

The treaty defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

“Genocides are never declared in advance, but this court has the benefit of 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies as a plausible claim of genocidal acts,” Hassim told the judges in The Hague.

“Nothing will stop the suffering except an order from this court. Without an indication of provisional measures, the atrocities will continue, with the Israel Defence Force indicating that it intends pursuing this course of action for at least a year,” she said.

Lowe added that the case was concerned only with Israel’s conduct in Gaza and did not include Hamas’s atrocities because the militant group was not a state and could not be a party to the Genocide Convention.

As the hearing started, pro-Palestinian protesters rallied outside the court. Among those in the public gallery was Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, who said he was there to support South Africa’s case against Israel.

There have been calls from hardline Israeli politicians to resettle the Gazans in other countries but on the eve of the hearing, Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said Israel had no intention of occupying Gaza or displacing its population. “Israel is fighting Hamas terrorists, not the Palestinian population, and we are doing so in full compliance with international law,” he said.

South Africa had repeatedly criticised Israel before assembling its case. The country has been supportive of the Palestinians since the end of apartheid.

Experts say South Africa will face difficulties proving genocide, and the court has never issued a ruling to that effect. It ruled that Serbia had failed to prevent genocide rather than committed it after Bosnian Serbs killed thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.

Netanyahu accused South Africa of “representing monsters” and “accusing Israel of genocide while it is fighting genocide”, saying its case at The Hague is evidence of a “world turned upside down”.

The Times