At a listening to earlier than the U.N.’s highest court docket, South Africa on Tuesday referred to as Israel’s insurance policies towards Palestinians an “extreme form of apartheid” and argued that its occupation of territory hunted for an eventual Palestinian state was “fundamentally illegal.”
The listening to on the International Court of Justice in The Hague is considered one of two issues being heard about Israel, a part of a concerted effort to leverage the authority of the court docket and the worldwide attain of the U.N. to cease the warfare in Gaza and study the legality of Israel’s insurance policies towards the Palestinians.
Starting this week and lasting six days, the court docket is listening to arguments on Israel’s conduct, following a request by the United Nations General Assembly greater than a yr in the past. In the opposite matter, a case, which started in January, South Africa accuses Israel of committing genocide in its ongoing warfare in opposition to Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has strongly rejected these accusations.
The newest proceedings, which started on Monday, concentrate on the legality of Israel’s “occupation, settlement and annexation” of Palestinian-majority territories, together with the West Bank and East Jerusalem. South Africa and plenty of different nations which have requested to deal with the court docket argue that Israel’s decades-long occupation violates the Palestinians’ proper to self-determination and that its safety equipment, together with an enormous wall, quantities to racial segregation.
More than 50 nations and three regional blocs are scheduled to argue earlier than the 15-judge bench over the following week, a stage of participation by no means earlier than seen on the court docket.
The hearings on Israel’s insurance policies have gained urgency amid the bloodshed of the warfare in Gaza. They come lower than a month after the court docket ordered Israel to restrain its assaults within the Hamas-controlled territory within the genocide case.
The court docket is predicted to reply the questions on the legality of Israel’s conduct with an advisory opinion that shall be nonbinding.
Palestinians “continue to be subjected to discriminating land zoning and planning policies, to punitive house demolitions and violent incursions into their villages, towns and cities,” South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusi Madonsela, stated in an tackle to the court docket on Tuesday.
Israel has lengthy rejected accusations that it operates an apartheid system, calling such allegations a slur and pointing to a historical past of being singled out for condemnation by U.N. our bodies and tribunals.
Also on Tuesday, the 22-nation Arab Group of the U.N. submitted a decision to the Security Council calling for an instantaneous cease-fire in Gaza. The United States vetoed the decision for the third time.
Israel stated it will not take part on this week’s hearings in The Hague, saying the premise earlier than the court docket was unwarranted and biased. Last yr, Israel delivered a letter to the court docket by which it argued that the main target of the proceedings didn’t “recognize Israel’s right and duty to protect its citizens,” to acknowledge Israel’s safety or to consider years of agreements with the Palestinians to barter “the permanent status of the territory, security arrangements, settlements and borders.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel stated in a press release on Monday that the case is “part of the Palestinian attempt to dictate the results of the political agreement without negotiations.”
The warfare in Gaza, which the Gazan Health Ministry stated has killed greater than 29,000 folks and which was began by final yr’s Hamas-led terrorist assault on southern Israel that killed 1,200, is foremost within the public’s thoughts, however it’s not the warfare most related to the current hearings.
Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt in a 1967 warfare with its Arab neighbors. Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005. It considers components of the occupied West Bank to be disputed territory, and has constructed settlements there, which a lot of the world considers unlawful. After the 1967 warfare, Israel formally annexed East Jerusalem and considers the unified metropolis its capital.
South Africa and different audio system have argued that the proliferation of Jewish settlements, lots of that are full-fledged cities, means that the occupation will not be momentary, however everlasting.
Support for the Palestinians has lengthy been a well-liked rallying cry in South Africa and its governing occasion, the African National Congress, has usually in contrast Israel’s insurance policies to these of apartheid-era South Africa.
In his arguments on Tuesday, Mr. Madonsela, the South African diplomat, recalled his nation’s historical past of racial segregation and invoked considered one of apartheid’s most well-known critics, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Citing the separate court docket techniques, land zoning guidelines, roads and housing rights for Palestinians, he stated Israel had put in place a “two-tier system of laws, rules and services” that profit Jewish settlers whereas “denying Palestinians rights.”
Mr. Madonsela quoted a 2010 assertion from Archbishop Tutu, by which the Nobel laureate stated Israel maintains a system for the “two populations in the West Bank, which provides preferential services, development and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on Palestinians. This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable.”
South Africans see “an even more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against Black people in my country,” Mr. Madonsela stated. He stated that South Africa had a particular obligation to name out apartheid practices wherever they happen. He additionally referred to as on Israel to dismantle the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank, which the court docket had ordered be eliminated in 2004 and nonetheless stands.
The United States is scheduled to make arguments on Wednesday.
The judges are anticipated to take roughly 5 months to problem their advisory opinion.
