All eyes on ICJ as South Africa's Gaza genocide case against Israel begins

A legal battle over whether Israel's war in Gaza amounts to genocide is set to open at the United Nations' top court with preliminary hearings into South Africa's call for judges to order an immediate suspension of Israel's military invasion.

Israel denies the genocide charge even as it has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, mostly kids and women, wounded nearly 60,000, uprooted 85 percent of Gaza's 2.3 million population and flattened some 60 percent of the enclave's infrastructure.

The case that will begin on Thursday, which is likely to take years to resolve, strikes at the heart of Israel's national identity as a state created by the Zionists in the aftermath of the Nazi genocide in the Holocaust.

It also involves South Africa's identity: Its ruling African National Congress party has long compared Israel's policies in besieged Gaza and the occupied West Bank to its own history under the apartheid regime of white minority rule, which restricted most Blacks to "homelands" before ending in 1994.

Israel often considers UN and international tribunals unfair and biased. But it is sending a strong legal team to the International Court of Justice [ICJ] to defend its brutal onslaught in besieged Gaza.

"I think they have come because they want to be exonerated and think they can successfully resist the accusation of genocide," said Juliette McIntyre, an expert on international law at the University of South Australia.

In a statement after the case was filed, the Palestinian Authority's Foreign Ministry urged the court to "immediately take action to protect the Palestinian people and call on Israel, the occupying power, to halt its onslaught against the Palestinian people, in order to ensure an objective legal resolution."

Two days of preliminary hearings at the ICJ will begin with lawyers for South Africa explaining to judges why the country has accused Israel of "acts and omissions" that are "genocidal in character" in its war on besieged Gaza and has called for an immediate halt to Israel's assault.

Thursday's opening hearing is focused on South Africa's request for the court to impose binding interim orders, including that Israel halt its military invasion. A decision will likely take weeks.

Israel has demonstrated genocide intent: South Africa

The World Court, which rules on disputes between nations, has never adjudged a country to be responsible for genocide. The closest it came was in 2007 when it ruled that Serbia "violated the obligation to prevent genocide" in the July 1995 massacre by Bosnian Serb forces of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.

South Africa "will have a hard time getting over the threshold" of proving genocide, said McIntyre. "It's not simply a matter of killing enormous numbers of people," she added in an email to The Associated Press.

"There must be an intent to destroy a group of people [classified by race or religion, for example] in whole or in part, in a particular place."

In a detailed, 84-page document launching the case late last year, South Africa says that Israel has demonstrated that intent.

Israel responded by insisting it operates according to "international law" and focuses its assault solely against the Palestinian resistance group Hamas, adding that the residents of besieged Gaza are not an enemy.

The numbers, however, are a stark contrast to what Israel claims.

500 instances of Israelis advocating for genocide

Not only has Israel wiped out more than one percent of Gaza's population, its top government and security officials have repeatedly vowed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians in Gaza.

Recently, a Europe-based non-profit human rights organisation — Law for Palestine — unveiled over 500 instances of Israeli officials advocating for genocide against Palestinians.

"Gaza is the city of evil, we will turn all the places in which Hamas deploys and hides into ruins. I am telling the people of Gaza — get out of there now. We will act everywhere and with full power," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on October 13.

"You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible," he said on October 28. Netanyahu continued: "We remember, and we are fighting … our soldiers are part of a legacy of Jewish warriors that goes back 3,000 years."

Israeli military, too, have also been caught showing genocidal intent and collective punishment ambitions in Gaza.

An example of that was an image taken by an Israeli soldier of an artillery shell that had a text written on it in Hebrew: "God Willing, it will hit innocent people."

An Israeli Foreign Ministry statement called South Africa's case a "despicable and contemptuous exploitation" of the court.

A team of lawyers representing South Africa will present three hours of arguments in the wood-panelled Great Hall of Justice at the World Court.

Israel's legal team will have three hours on Friday morning to refute the allegations.

Among South Africa's delegation will be former UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose leadership of the left-of-centre Labour Party.

He is a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause and a fierce critic of Israeli occupation.

Human Rights Watch said the hearings will provide scrutiny in a UN courtroom of Israel's actions.

"South Africa's genocide case unlocks a legal process at the world’s highest court to credibly examine Israel's conduct in Gaza in the hopes of curtailing further suffering," said Balkees Jarrah, the group's associate international justice director.

The UN court, headquartered in the ornate Peace Palace in a leafy suburb of The Hague, deals with disputes between nations.

The International Criminal Court, based a few kilometres away in the same Dutch city, prosecutes individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Israel is back on the ICJ docket next month, when hearings open into a UN request for a non-binding advisory opinion on the legality of Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.

What exactly is genocide?

In its written filing, South Africa says it went to the court "to establish Israel’s responsibility for violations of the Genocide Convention; to hold it fully accountable under international law for those violations" and to "ensure the urgent and fullest possible protection for Palestinians in Gaza who remain at grave and immediate risk of continuing and further acts of genocide."

Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly.

The term genocide was first coined by the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, which initially meant killing. Ironically, the formation of the term was in response to the Nazi genocide against Jews in Europe.

According to Article II of the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide acts are:

— Intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, including killing members of the group

— Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

— Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

— Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.