The international court of justice (ICJ) will begin hearing arguments in just under 4 hours alleging that\u00a0Israel\u00a0is committing genocide in its war in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Africa, which has brought the case to the UN\u2019s top court in The Hague, is asking the ICJ to act urgently \u201cto protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the genocide convention, which continues to be violated with impunity\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It comes as the assault on Gaza \u2013 launched in response to\u00a0the 7 October attacks on Israel\u00a0by Hamas in which militants killed 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and took 240 people hostage \u2013 continues to wreak a devastating toll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israel reacted furiously\u00a0when the application was made, calling it \u201cbaseless\u201d and a \u201cblood libel\u201d. It says it is acting in self-defence, to protect Israelis by destroying Hamas. The country\u2019s biggest supporter, the US,\u00a0has dismissed the case as \u201cmeritless\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both sides\u2019 legal teams will have the same amount of time to make their case \u2013 approximately three hours \u2013 with South Africa going first on Thursday and then Israel responding on Friday. Judgment will be reserved until a later date, but could come within weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More to follow\u2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The international court of justice (ICJ) will begin hearing arguments in just under 4 hours alleging that\u00a0Israel\u00a0is committing genocide in its war in Gaza. South Africa, which has brought the case to the UN\u2019s top court in The Hague, is asking the ICJ to act urgently \u201cto protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":41126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1648,183,11394,7960,6848,10484,10507,2629,5884,8100,5930,10825,10954,9722,3095,10419,9515,5568,244,5465,6348,5251],"class_list":["post-41125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-africa","tag-assault","tag-attacks","tag-case","tag-civilians","tag-convention","tag-court","tag-gaza","tag-genocide","tag-hague","tag-hamas","tag-hostage","tag-international","tag-international-criminal-court-icc","tag-israel","tag-justice","tag-killed","tag-palestinian","tag-south-africa","tag-un","tag-us","tag-war"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41127,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41125\/revisions\/41127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}