Top SA legal team argues genocidal intent by Israel showing how life is being squeezed from Gaza

In a packed Peace Palace watched by the world, South Africa took Israel to the World Court, arguing that it is committing genocide in Gaza. 

With a top global legal team of nine and a delegation led by Justice Minister Ronald Lamola, South Africa has argued that Israel has genocidal intent in Palestine and asked the Court to order six specific actions to end the carnage. These include ending military action, stopping the killing, opening up humanitarian corridors to prevent a coming famine and allowing the free and safe birth of Palestinian babies. 

Each team member argued to their strengths with the internationally renowned Professor John Dugard crafting the core of the strategy. 

Advocate Adila Hassim opened for South Africa, bringing her years of social justice practice to an impassioned address. She told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) headed by President Judge Joan Donoghue that the proceedings under the Genocide Convention “expressed the essence of our shared humanity”.  

“Genocides are never declared in advance but this court has the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows a pattern,” she said, adding that news feeds had become scrolls of graphic images “unbearable to watch”. She said that Israel had warned it would continue for a year and said that without an order from the Court, the horror would not cease.  

She said that in 96 days since the Israeli state attacked Gaza following the bloody incursion by Hamas on October 7, life had become impossible. 

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She argued that entry and exit by air and sea were prohibited, blocking food, fuel and the essentials to live, displaying a map of the Gaza Strip to show how it was locked in. 

“This conduct renders essentials to life unobtainable,” she argued. 

Israel’s actions, she argued, amounted to a “pattern of genocidal conduct. At least some (of this conduct), if not all, falls within the Genocide Convention’s provisions”. 

Four genocidal acts

Hassim grouped the conduct into four categories of acts that could be regarded as genocidal. 

The first genocidal act is the mass killing of civilians in Gaza. 

“The level of killing is so extensive that nowhere is safe in Gaza,” she said. By 11 January, 23,210 Palestinians had been killed in three months, at least 70% of whom are believed to be women and children 

“Seven thousand Palestinians are missing, presumed dead under the rubble,” she said, adding that mosques, schools, churches and other community buildings had been destroyed. She told the court Israel deployed “the biggest and most destructive bombs available” and said there were records it had deployed 6,000 bombs per week in the first three weeks.

“Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians in full knowledge of how many civilians each bomb would take,” said Hassim. 

“Multi-generational families have been wiped out, often all killed together. This killing is nothing short of destruction of Palestinian life. The scale of Palestinian child killings is such that UN chiefs describe it as a graveyard for children,” she said.

The second genocidal act she laid out details of was the severe bodily and mental harm Palestinians faced. The third is actions that make life impossible to sustain. Hassim said that 85% of Gazans had been repeatedly displaced. 

“Those who cannot leave have been killed or are risk of being killed.” There is widespread hunger and dehydration, and Israel has pushed Palestinian people to the brink of famine, said Hassim, setting out the third measure of plausible and rising genocide.

“Of all the people in the world currently suffering catastrophic hunger, more than 80% are in Gaza,” said Hassim, adding that more people could die from hunger than from airstrikes.  

South Africa showed the Court an image of thousands of people desperately chasing a single food truck as it arrived. Hassim spoke of soaring disease rates as water supplies broke down. The fourth, she said, was a military assault on Gaza’s health system, which had brought it to its knees, and she laid out how pregnant women suffered the lack of birth care they needed. 

“All of these acts form a calculated pattern of conduct indicating a genocidal intent. They are specially targeting Palestinians, using weaponry that causes homicidal destruction. (Israel) designates safe zones telling people to seek safe refuge and then bombs these."

‘Injunction to kill Palestinians’

Advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi told the Court that Israel’s leaders had declared their genocidal intent.  

He referred expressly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in different speeches instructing, “‘You must remember what Amalek has done to you says our Holy Bible, And we do remember.’” Ngcukaitobi said this biblical junction to “destroy the seed of Amalek” was read as an injunction to kill Palestinians as a group.

 He showed video clips of soldiers chanting about the seed of Amalek “Soldiers repeat these (statements by leaders) on the ground” he told the Court, showing the pattern repeatedly of how political leaders’ violent words led to violent actions. “The language of systematic dehumanisation is evident here,” said Ngcukaitobi. He said that later attempts by Netanyahu to neutralise his words have not affected how soldiers understand state policy on the ground and in his government. Israel's attorney-general announced on 10 January that he would investigate hate speech by political leaders.

Ngcukaitobi also showed images of Shujaiya, a wholly destroyed village, systematically bombed over two weeks and argued that what was being witnessed was a “calculated destruction of Palestinian life in all its manifestation”. “Genocide in the time of peace or war is a crime in international law,” he said.  

What happens next

Israel will present its defence against the allegations of a rising genocide on Friday, 12 January. An interim decision is expected by the court in 10 to 14 days while the substance of the case could take years to argue. DM