Cuba says not to stand idle, backs South Africa case against 'Israel'
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Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel says Havana will not stand idle on oppression as he voices his country's unwavering support for South Africa's case against "Israel" at the ICJ.
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Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel addresses the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly, September 19, 2023 (AP)
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel expressed his country's steadfast support for the lawsuit filed by South Africa before the International Court of Justice against "Israel" for the crimes and acts of genocide committed against the Palestinian people.
#Cuba expresa su firme respaldo a la demanda de Sudáfrica en la Corte Internacional de Justicia contra Israel por los crímenes y actos genocidas cometidos contra el pueblo palestino.
— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) January 11, 2024
¡Jamás estaremos entre los indiferentes!#FreePalestinehttps://t.co/RI77gwmeH0
The Cuban president affirmed that the Cuban people "We will never be indifferent" to oppression.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez stated that Cuba supports the lawsuit filed by South Africa, urgently calling for the cessation of genocide and racial discrimination against the Palestinian people.
#Cuba supports South Africa's claim before the International Court of Justice against Israel's genocide in Palestine.
— Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) January 11, 2024
Statement by @CubaMINREX:https://t.co/XQJ3rr8ua5#FreePalestine pic.twitter.com/xqcLHJQZ7k
This comes after the first hearing took place on Wednesday at the International Court of Justice in the case brought by South Africa against "Israel," accusing it of committing genocide in Gaza.
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 recognized inalienable right to self-determination and their internationally recognized 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."
The South African team stated that Palestinians have been killed by the relentless Israeli bombing of Palestinians wherever 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."
