Israel has urged the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to reject South Africa’s attempt to stop the assault on Rafah in Gaza.
Israel’s lawyers told the ICJ that the country has the right to move ahead with a full-scale offensive on Rafah in southern Gaza to defend itself against Palestinian group, Hamas.
South Africa asked the ICJ on Thursday to order Israel to stop its offensive on Rafah. South Africa requested that the ICJ issue three emergency orders, or “provisional measures”, while it rules on the wider accusation that Israel is breaking the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Gilad Noam, Israel’s Deputy Attorney-General for international law, told the International Court of Justice (ICJ), “The fact remains that the city of Rafah also serves as a military stronghold for Hamas, which continues to pose a significant threat to the state of Israel and its citizens.”
Noam accused South Africa of making “a mockery of the heinous charge of genocide,” “adopting a strategy of dragging Israel to court endlessly” and having an “ulterior motive” for urging an Israeli withdrawal from Rafah to obtain “a military advantage for its ally Hamas, which it does not want to see defeated.”
South Africa, Noam claims, is “cherry-picking” facts and Israeli statements to take advantage of the “low evidentiary threshold” required for the ICJ to implement provisional measures.
Noam argued that all provisional measures sought by South Africa are without merit. He argued that Israel should not be ordered to withdraw from Gaza because that would mean more than 100 Israeli captives will remain trapped in the territory, Hamas will be left to operate unhindered and such an order would strip Israel of its rights under international law.
The court would be turning the Genocide Convention “into a sword rather than a shield.”
Tamar Kaplan Tourgeman, Principal Deputy Legal Adviser of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Israel was making “remarkable efforts” to improve aid delivery, denying that it had shut down southern Gaza’s two main crossings – the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which it seized on May 7 as it launched an assault on the town, and the Karem Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) crossing with Israel.
“This is blatantly untrue,” she said at Friday’s hearing. “The truth is that Israel allows and facilitates the provision of more and more humanitarian aid through a number of crossings on a daily basis.”
Before closing the hearing, the ICJ put a question to the Israeli delegation about humanitarian conditions in its declared “evacuation zones” in Gaza.
Judge Georg Nolte read the question, “Can Israel provide information about the existing humanitarian conditions in the designated evacuation zones, in particular al-Mawasi, and how it would ensure safe passage to these zones, as well as the provision of shelter, food, water, and other humanitarian aid and assistance to all evacuees that are and can be expected to arrive in these zones?”
The court ordered Israel to submit a written reply to the question no later than tomorrow, May 18, 2024 at 4pm.
Israel Defence At ICJ A ‘Propaganda Attack’
Marc Owen Jones, an Associate Professor of Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, stated Israel has used the ICJ hearing as a way to get out “dishonest talking points” on aid distribution in Gaza and to launch ad hominem attacks on South Africa.
“This is why a lot of what it says comes across as completely dishonest – because it is completely dishonest,” Owen Jones told Al Jazeera.
“There is a difference between the reality on the ground and what Israel is trying to present to the international community”.
Owen Jones said he believes South Africa’s case is strong enough for the court to issue additional provisional measures in Gaza, especially given that humanitarian conditions in the besieged and bombarded territory have only worsened after the court’s earlier orders for Israel to facilitate better aid flow.
“It’s months later and the aid situation is desperate,” he said.
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