What chance does South Africa’s genocide case against Israel have at the International Court of Justice?

Special What chance does South Africa’s genocide case against Israel have at the International Court of Justice?
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Palestinian women mourn their relatives who were killed in an overnight Israeli strike on the Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on December 24, 2023. Israel is now facing a case of genocide at the UN’s top judicial agency over its indiscriminate strikes on Palestinian civilian centers in Gaza. (AFP)
Special What chance does South Africa’s genocide case against Israel have at the International Court of Justice?
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Indiscriminate shellings and bombings by Israeli defense forces have killed more than 20,000 people in Gaza and displaced hundreds of thousands more from their homes. (AFP)
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Updated 05 January 2024
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What chance does South Africa’s genocide case against Israel have at the International Court of Justice?

What chance does South Africa’s genocide case against Israel have at the International Court of Justice?
  • The South African government has accused Israel of breaching its obligations under the Genocide Convention
  • If the court finds there is a “plausible risk” of Israel committing genocidal acts in Gaza, pressure will grow for a ceasefire

LONDON: South Africa’s decision to bring a case against Israel at the UN’s top judicial agency over what it describes as “genocidal acts” in Gaza represents a watershed moment for international law, according to experts.

The International Court of Justice confirmed it has received an 84-page suit, filed on Dec. 29, detailing purported brutal practices in breach of Israel’s obligations under the Genocide Convention, and said a hearing will take place on Jan. 11 and 12.

Michelle Kelsall, a senior lecturer in international law at the SOAS University of London and co-director of the Centre for Human Rights Law, said an ICJ ruling that finds there is a “plausible risk” of Israel committing genocidal acts would mark an important development in the push for a ceasefire agreement.




South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, shown in this September 19, 2023, photo at the UN General Assembly, has accused Israel ofthe crime of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. (AFP)

“If the court does determine that there is a plausible risk to genocidal acts being committed, it may order provisional measures in line with what South Africa is requesting, which would be in keeping with recent case law determined by the court,” Kelsall told Arab News.

“Notably, it does not need to determine if Israel is committing genocidal acts in order for the obligation to prevent to be invoked, or to order provisional measures. It is sufficient that a plausible risk of genocide occurring has been proven, based on the evidence presented.”

Such evidence includes not only mass casualties, which now exceed 22,000 according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza, but impediments to births through damage to essential health services, the destruction of homes, blockades preventing the provision of food, water and medical assistance, and widespread expulsions and displacement of Gazans.

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These actions, the suit argues, can only be read as being “intended to bring about destruction (of Palestinians) as a group,” in violation of the 1948 convention’s definition of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

Furthermore, the suit argues that statements by Israeli officials, including embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demonstrate the “genocidal intent” necessary to prove a claim of genocide.

Cited evidence of this includes Netanyahu’s comparison of Palestinians to the biblical story of the Amalek nation, which God ordered Israelites to destroy, and his assertion on Dec. 26 that the fighting would be “deepened” despite the high civilian death toll.




In a sign of utter disregard of Palestinian lives, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that the offensive in Gaza would be “deepened” despite the high civilian death toll. (Pool photo via Reuters/File)

Mai El-Sadany, a human rights lawyer and director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, recently told Al Jazeera that the South African legal documentation was particularly prescient, given what she described as “heightened disinformation around the war.”

She said the case would have significant implications, adding that the proceedings within the ICJ were “important in slowing the normalization of any mass atrocities committed by Israel.”

El-Sadany added: “They send a message that if a country commits mass atrocities, as Israel is doing, it must expect to be brought before an international court, for its record to be critiqued against international norms, and for its reputation on the international stage to take a hit.”


FASTFACTS

FASTFACTS South Africa’s 84-page suit accuses Israel of breaching the Genocide Convention.

The International Court of Justice hearing at the Hague will take place Jan. 11-12.


Kelsall said Israel’s allies might also find themselves in the spotlight, as “the Court stands to make an important pronouncement regarding obligations to prevent genocide more generally, which could have ramifications for states other than South Africa and Israel.”

This, she added, reflects the ICJ’s assertion following the 1995 Bosnian genocide that the obligation to prevent such crimes must take into account the geographical distance of the state concerned from the scene of the crimes, and the strength of political connections and ties of other kinds.

“While South Africa may have limited capacity to do more than it already has (in requesting provisional measures from the court), several other states, including the US and the UK, may be put on notice of a much more significant obligation to prevent genocide,” said Kelsall.




This picture taken on January 3, 2024 shows a view of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombardment in the central Gaza Strip amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. (AFP)

Israel’s Foreign Ministry condemned the filing of the case as “despicable and contemptuous exploitation” of the ICJ, and accused the South African government of “blood libel” and being “criminally complicit” in the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas on Israel.

Nonetheless, Israeli officials appear to be taking the move seriously. The government’s spokesperson, Eylon Levy, confirmed it would defend its practices at the court in The Hague, with American lawyer Alan Dershowitz reportedly in line to lead the defense.

This is in itself an indication of the potential ramifications for the Israeli government, with some commentators suggesting the nation might face a bevy of sanctions as domestic pressure forces the hands of allies in London and Washington.

Sarang Shidore, director of the Washington-based Quincy Institute, told Al Jazeera a ruling in favor of South Africa’s case would certainly put pressure on the Biden administration in this presidential election year.

A ruling against Israel could have “implications for the standing of the US,” he said.

“The Biden administration is increasingly vulnerable to domestic opponents of the war and international charges of double standards (but) my sense is that the Biden administration, and some key European allies, will strongly back Israel at the ICJ. We shall see.”

 


Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says

Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says
Updated 4 sec ago
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Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says

Explosions heard near Damascus, Syrian state news agency says

DAMASCUS: Explosions were heard in the areas surrounding Syria’s capital Damascus and authorities were investigating, the Syrian state news agency said on Sunday.


At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says

At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says
Updated 10 November 2024
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At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says

At least 23 killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon's Almat, ministry says
  • Strike on Sunday occurred in the village of Aalmat, north of Beirut, and far from the areas in the south and east of the country where the Hezbollah militant group has a major presence

BEIRUT: At least 20 people, including three children, were killed and six others injured in an Israeli strike on Almat in Lebanon’s Mount Lebanon province, the country’s health ministry said on Sunday.
Three people were also killed and two others wounded in an Israeli strike on Mashghara in the western part of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley late on Saturday, while one person was killed and four others injured in a strike on Sahmar, also in western Bekaa, that occurred the same night, the health ministry added.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which says it is targeting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.


UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media
Updated 10 November 2024
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UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

UN atomic watchdog chief to arrive in Iran Wednesday: state media

TEHRAN: The chief of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, will visit Iran in days for talks with senior officials, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.
“The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency will arrive in Iran on Wednesday ... at the official invitation of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
Grossi will meet Iranian officials on Thursday, the agency added.
The IAEA confirmed Grossi’s visit to Iran this week, without specifying the date in a post on X.
It said the visit would include talks with Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi.
The agency also quoted Grossi as calling for “substantive progress” on a March 2023 deal that had outlined basic cooperation, including on safeguards and monitoring.
In a September interview with AFP, Grossi said Iran was showing “willingness” to re-engage on the nuclear issue, but it was not willing to walk back on a decision it took to ban some of the IAEA’s inspectors.
Iran withdrew the accreditation of several inspectors last year, a move the UN agency described at the time as “extreme and unjustified.”
Tehran had said then its decision was a consequence of “political abuses” by the United States, France, Germany and Britain.
Grossi last visited Iran in May, when he called for “concrete” measures to help bolster cooperation on Iran’s nuclear program at a news conference in Isfahan province, home to the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.
His visit this month will come after Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election.
During his first term in office, Trump unilaterally withdrew Washington from a pivotal nuclear deal that aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.
Efforts mediated by the European Union have failed to bring Washington back on board and to get Tehran to again comply with the terms of the accord.
Iran has rolled back its commitments to caps on nuclear activities under the deal, and tensions have repeatedly flared between Tehran and the IAEA over its compliance.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, who took office in July, has favored reviving that agreement and called for ending his country’s isolation.
On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he was “not looking to do damage to Iran” but noted that Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
Iran has always denied having ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon, insisting its activities are entirely peaceful.
On Saturday, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif urged Trump to reassess his “maximum pressure” policy which has seen the US impose punishing sanctions on Tehran.
He blamed that policy for leading to the surge in enrichment levels “to reach 60 percent from 3.5 percent.”
Enrichment levels of around 90 percent are required for military use.
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Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
Updated 10 November 2024
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Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum

Syrians, Iraqis archive Daesh jail crimes in virtual museum
  • They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed
  • In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.

Paris: After jihadists jailed him in 2014, Iraqi religious scholar Muhammad Al-Attar said he would sometimes pull his prison blanket over his head to cry without other detainees noticing.
Daesh group extremists arrested Attar, then 37, at his perfume shop in Mosul in June 2014 after overrunning the Iraqi city, hoping to convince the respected community leader to join them.
But the former preacher refused to pledge allegiance, and they threw him into prison where he was tortured.
In his group cell of at least 148 detainees at Mosul’s Ahdath prison, at times “there was nothing left but to weep,” Attar said.
But “I couldn’t bear the thought of the younger men seeing me cry. They would have broken down.”
So he hid under his blanket.
Daesh, also called Daesh, seized control of large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq and declared a so-called caliphate there in 2014, implementing its brutal interpretation of religion on inhabitants.
The militants banned smoking, mandated beards for men and head-to-toe coverings for women, publicly executed homosexuals and cut off the hands of thieves.
They threw perceived informants or “apostates” into prison or makeshift jails, many of whom never returned.
Attar’s story is one of more than 500 testimonies that dozens of journalists, filmmakers and human rights activists in Syria and Iraq have collected since 2017 as part of an online archive called the Daesh Prisons Museum.
The website, which includes virtual visits of former jihadist detention centers and numerous tales about life inside them, became public this month.
The project is holding its first physical exhibition, including virtual reality tours, at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the UN’s culture and education agency, until November 14.
Syrian journalist Amer Matar, 38, is director of the web-based museum.
“IS abducted my brother in 2013, and we started to look for him,” he told AFP.
After US-backed forces started to expel jihadists from parts of Syria and Iraq in 2017, “I and my team got the chance to go inside certain former IS prisons,” he said.
They found thousands of prison documents from the group whose caliphate was eventually defeated in 2019, but also detainee scratchings on the walls.
Etched inside the football stadium in the Syrian city of Raqqa, for example, the team found prisoner names and Qur’anic verses, as well as lyrics from a 1996 television drama about peace eventually prevailing.
Inside one solitary cell, they discovered exercise instructions to keep fit in English.
Matar says he was detained twice at the start of the Syrian civil war, in a government jail for covering protests against President Bashar Assad.
“I too would write my name on the wall because I didn’t know if I’d get out or if they’d kill me,” he said.
“People usually write their names, cries for help or stories about someone who was killed,” he added.
“They’re messages into the future so that people can find someone.”
Matar and his team decided to film the former prison sites and archive all the material within them before they disappeared.
“Many were homes, clinics, government buildings, schools or shops” that people were returning to and starting to repair, said Matar, who is now based in Germany.
They managed to capture 3D footage of around 50 former Daesh jails and 30 mass graves before they were transformed, he said.
In total they have documented 100 prison sites, interviewed more than 500 survivors and digitised over 70,000 Daesh documents.
Younes Qays, a 30-year-old journalist from Mosul, was in charge of data collection in Iraq.
“To hear and see the crimes inflicted on my people was really tough,” he said, recounting being particularly shocked by the tale of a woman from the Yazidi minority who was raped 11 times in IS captivity.
Robin Yassin-Kassab, the website’s English editor, said the project aimed to “gather information and cross-reference it” so it could be used in court.
“We want legal teams around the world to know that we exist so that they can come and ask us for evidence,” he said.
Matar has not found his brother.
But within the coming year, he hopes to launch a sister website called Jawab, “Answer” in Arabic, to help others find out what happened to their loved ones.


Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
Updated 10 November 2024
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Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say

Dozens killed and wounded in Israeli strike on northern Gaza's Jabalia, medics say
  • The first strike on a house in Jabalia in northern Gaza killed ‘at least 25’ people

GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Dozens of people were killed and wounded in an Israeli strike on a house in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip at dawn on Sunday, Palestinian medics said.
Footage circulating on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed about a dozen bodies wrapped in blankets and laid to the ground at a hospital. Residents said the building that was hit had housed at least 30 people.
The Palestinian official news agency WAFA and Hamas media put the number of people killed at 32. There was no immediate confirmation of the tally by the territory’s health ministry.
The Civil Emergency Service says its operations have been halted by an ongoing Israeli raid into two towns and a refugee camp in northern Gaza that began on Oct 5. It also could not provide a figure for those killed in the attack.
Israel says it sent forces into Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in the north of the enclave to fight Hamas militants waging attacks from there and to prevent them from regrouping. It says its troops have killed hundreds of militants in those areas since the new offensive began.
In Gaza City, an Israeli airstrike on a house in Sabra neighborhood killed Wael Al-Khour, an official at the Welfare Ministry, and seven other members of his family including his wife and children on Sunday, medics and relatives said.
The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports on the strike in Jabalia and in the Sabra neighborhood.