South Africa’s genocide case against Israel to be heard by UN court

The UN’s court is listening to a case from South Africa. They are saying that Israel is doing terrible things to Palestinians in Gaza.

The request also asks the court to tell Israel to stop fighting in that area.

The ICJ will only give their view on the genocide claim because it’s not a criminal trial. But many people are paying close attention to it.

Israel strongly denied the accusation as “baseless”.

On Thursday, there was a lot of anger outside the ICJ’s Peace Palace as Dutch police tried to keep Palestinian and Israeli supporters from fighting.

Many people holding flags from Palestine came together outside the ICJ, asking for fighting to stop. Israeli supporters put up a screen to display pictures of some of the hostages still being held in Gaza.

South Africa will explain its side on Thursday and Israel will give its side on Friday.

South Africa says that Israel is trying to destroy many Palestinians.

Israel is doing things that hurt and kill people in Gaza, and it’s making their lives very hard.

The court wants Israel to stop all fighting in Gaza right away.

The ICJ is an important court for the United Nations, located in the Hague, Netherlands. The decisions of the ICJ are supposed to be followed by countries like Israel and South Africa, but they don’t have to follow them if they don’t want to.

In 2022, the court told Russia to stop fighting in Ukraine right away, but they didn’t listen.

In the law of the world, genocide means doing something on purpose to destroy a group of people because of their nationality, race, or religion.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is different from the International Criminal Court (ICC). It doesn’t have the power to put people on trial for things like genocide. But its decisions are important to the United Nations and other global organizations.

On Wednesday, the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, said that his country is strongly against the killing of people in Gaza and is taking the matter to the ICJ.

The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, said the accusations were terrible and ridiculous.

“We will go to the International Court of Justice and proudly present our case for using self-defense under humanitarian law,” he said.

He said the Israeli army is working very hard in difficult situations to avoid causing harm to innocent people.

The ICJ might decide soon on South Africa’s request for Israel to stop its military actions. But it could take a long time for a final decision on whether Israel is committing genocide.

William Schabas, an international law professor who led a UN committee looking into Israel’s fight with Hamas in 2014, said it is easy for the court to order Israel to stop.

He told the BBC that South Africa must show evidence to support its argument in court, but it doesn’t mean the court will decide if genocide is happening or not.

South Africa is very upset about Israel’s military operation in Gaza and the African National Congress has always supported the Palestinian cause.

It relates to its fight against apartheid, which was a system in South Africa where the white minority government discriminated against the black majority until 1994.

In Gaza, over 23,350 people have died since the war started after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7th, according to the health ministry run by Hamas. In the attacks, about 1,300 people, mostly civilians, were killed and around 240 people were taken hostage.