JANUARY 13 — Lawyers representing South Africa and Israel concluded their submissions on Thursday and Friday respectively in the case brought by the former in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Lawyers representing South Africa presented detailed descriptions of what South Africa contends is a very compelling case of genocide that Israel is now committing in Gaza. The descriptions of genocide present the most detailed and most gruesome of genocides in recent history.
South Africa is asking the ICJ to quickly decide on urgent provisional measures to order Israel to stop whatever it is doing in Gaza. The three-hour oral presentation of the South African case against Israel can be summed up in three words:
Nothing justifies genocide.
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In reply, Israel argues that it was Hamas’s attack on army outposts and surrounding villages in southern Israel — as well as the taking of hundreds of captives — on October 7 that started the Gaza war, and that Israel has a right to defend itself under international law.
But Israel is an occupier force in Gaza. The ICJ has cast serious doubt on Israel’s ability to invoke a claim of self-defence against attacks emanating from Gaza.
Article 51 of the United Nations Charter entitles Israel to act in self-defence in response to armed attacks. In its 2004 Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory decision, however, the ICJ stated that Article 51 of the UN Charter “recognises the existence of an inherent right of self-defence in the case of armed attack by one State against another State.”
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Noting that Israel “does not claim that the attacks against it are imputable to a foreign state,” the ICJ concluded that attacks launched from the occupied West Bank do not give rise to an Israeli right of self-defence.
It does not mean that Israel, in principle, cannot use force to suppress violence emanating from the Gaza Strip, or act to protect its own civilian population.
But as a matter of law, it must do this as an exercise of its right to police the occupied territories, and not as an exercise of the right of self-defence.
Israel’s argument does not hold water. In one word, weak.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
