South Africa asked the International Court of Justice on Friday for an urgent order declaring that Israel was in breach of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its crackdown against the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza.
The ICJ, sometimes known as the World Court, is the United Nations venue for resolving disputes between states. Israel’s foreign ministry said in a reaction that the suit was “baseless.”
South Africa’s filing alleged Israel was violating its obligations under the treaty, drafted in the wake of the Holocaust, which makes it a crime to attempt to destroy a people in whole or in part.
It asked the court to issue provisional, or short-term, measures ordering Israel to stop its military campaign in Gaza, which it said were “necessary in this case to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people.”
No date has been set for a hearing.
In a first response to South Africa’s suit, Israel’s foreign ministry blamed Hamas for the suffering of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by using them as human shields and stealing humanitarian aid from them, accusations Hamas denies.
“The court must immediately take action to protect the Palestinian people and call on Israel, the occupying power, to halt its onslaught,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The court application is the latest move by South Africa, a critic of Israel’s war, to ratchet up pressure after its lawmakers last month voted in favour of closing down the Israeli embassy in Pretoria and suspending diplomatic relations.
In a statement from South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation, the government said the application against Israel was filed on Friday.—Reuters
