South Africa has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a lawsuit to oblige "Israel" to immediately stop its military operation in the Gaza Strip, a representative of the South African delegation, lawyer Vaughan Lowe, said on Thursday.

South Africa's legal team stated, in its opening statement at The Hague, that South Africa has recognized the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people through "Israel's" colonization since 1948, "which has systematically and forcibly dispossessed, displaced and fragmented the Palestinian people, deliberately denying them the internationally recognised inalienable right to self determination and their internationally recognised rights of return as refugees to their towns and villages in what is now the state of Israel."

The team emphasized that South Africa is particularly mindful of "Israel’s" "institutionalized regime of discriminatory laws, policies, and practices designed and maintained to establish domination, subjecting the Palestinian people to apartheid on both sides of the Green Line."

They also pointed out that the decade-long impunity for widespread and systematic human rights violations has emboldened "Israel" in its recurrence and intensification of humanitarian crimes in Palestine, while simultaneously acknowledging that "the genocidal acts and omissions" by "Israel" "inevitably form part of a continuum of illegal acts perpetrated against the Palestinian people since 1948."

They are confident that the application they submitted "places Israel’s genocidal acts and omissions within the broader context of its 25-year apartheid, 56-year occupation, and 16-year siege imposed on the Gaza Strip."

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They came with evidence

The South African team stated that Palestinians have been killed by the relentless bombing of "Israel" wherever Palestinians sought shelter, whether in schools, hospitals, mosques, or churches, "and as they tried to find food and water for their families." They have been killed if they failed to evacuate, killed in the places to which they have fled, and even killed while they attempted to flee along Israeli-declared safe routes. They described the level of killing as "so extensive that those whose bodies are found are buried in mass graves, often unidentified."

The team provided figures and statistics to back its statement mentioning that in the first three weeks alone, following 7 October, "Israel" deployed 6,000 bombs per week. At least 200 times, it has deployed 2000lb bombs in southern areas of Palestine designated as "safe". "These bombs have also decimated the north, including refugee camps," emphasizing that 2000lb bombs are some of the biggest and most destructive bombs available.

"Israel has killed an unparalleled and unprecedented number of civilians. With the full knowledge of how many civilian lives each bomb will take," said the team. They further elaborated that more than 1,800 Palestinian families in Gaza have lost multiple family members, and hundreds of multigenerational families have been wiped out of the civil register with no remaining survivors. Mothers, fathers, children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, and cousins, are often all killed together. They affirmed that the latter is nothing short of the destruction of Palestinian life and emphasized that it is inflicted deliberately and that "no one is spared, not even newborn babies."

"Israel" violates the Genocide Convention 

Adila Hassim, an advocate of the High Court of South Africa, declared that Israeli acts violate articles 2b and 2c of the Genocide Convention. She listed those acts, starting with leaving close to 60,000 Palestinians wounded and maimed, the majority of whom are women and children, while shedding light on the fact that the healthcare system in Palestine has collapsed. 

She elaborately presented how the Palestinians are suffering mentally and physically in which a large number of Palestinians, mainly children, are arrested, blindfolded, forced to undress, loaded onto trucks, and taken to unknown locations. 

Hassim described the conditions imposed by "Israel" on Gaza as "deliberate and calculated" causing physical destruction of Gaza and forced displacement of Palestinians. According to her statement, 85% of Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced forcefully by "Israel". This is evident by the first evacuation order on October 13 that led to the evacuation of over one million people, including children, elderly individuals, wounded, and others. Hassima described that order as "genocidal" and pointed out that it proved more evidently that the actions committed by the occupation were calculated as no humanitarian assistance was permitted. All necessities including fuel, water, and food had been deliberately cut off.  

The first hearing started at 10:00 am before the International Court of Justice, in The Hague, The Netherlands. The second hearing will be tomorrow where, according to Court procedure, the occupation will try to "defend itself".