Israel slams ‘repugnant’ South African ICJ request for more Gaza measures
Lawyers for Israel at World Court deny allegations offensive against Hamas is deliberately causing humanitarian suffering, call Pretoria’s repeated requests an abuse of procedures
Israel has asked the International Court of Justice not to issue an emergency order for it to step up humanitarian aid to Gaza to address what aid organizations warn is a looming famine, dismissing South Africa’s request for such an order as “morally repugnant.”
In a legal filing to the world’s top court, made public on Monday, Israel said it “has real concern for the humanitarian situation and innocent lives, as demonstrated by the actions it has and is taking” in Gaza during the war.
Lawyers for Israel denied allegations of deliberately causing humanitarian suffering in the enclave, where hunger is rising, and said South Africa’s repeated requests for additional measures were an abuse of procedures.
The filing said South Africa’s accusations in its request for new measures, filed March 6, are “wholly unfounded in fact and law, morally repugnant, and represent an abuse both of the Genocide Convention and of the court itself.”
The new exchange between the parties is part of South Africa’s ongoing case accusing Israel of state-led genocide in Gaza. The war between Israel and the Hamas regime in Gaza started after Hamas’s brutal October 7 onslaught, in which thousands of terrorists burst into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping another 253, mostly civilians.
In January the ICJ, also known as the World Court, ordered Israel to refrain from any acts that could fall under the Genocide Convention and to ensure its troops commit no genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza, but declined to impose an interim injunction ordering a stop to the war as it considers the case.
Israel denies targeting Palestinian civilians, saying its sole interest is to annihilate Hamas and release the hostages. The IDF has repeatedly accused Hamas operatives in Gaza of hiding among the Palestinian civilian population and using them as human shields.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza reports over 30,000 fatalities since October 7, in unverified figures that don’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, and list all the fatalities as caused by Israel — even those believed to have been caused by hundreds of misfired rockets or otherwise by Palestinian fire. Israel says over 13,000 of the Gaza dead are gunmen from Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Aid groups say all of Gaza is mired in a humanitarian crisis, with the situation in the largely isolated north standing out. Many of the estimated 300,000 people still living in northern Gaza have been reduced to eating animal fodder to survive, according to some accounts. The UN says that one in six children under the age of two in the north suffers from acute malnutrition.
ICJ emergency measures serve as temporary injunctions meant to keep a situation from deteriorating before the court can hear the full case, a process that usually takes several years.
This was the second petition South Africa has made to the court seeking motions against Israel in less than a month. In mid-February, South Africa requested urgent measures to safeguard southern Gaza’s Rafah amid Israeli plans for an offensive in the city, Hamas’s last bastion in the enclave. That request was denied.
At hearings in January, lawyers for Israel argued that its war in Gaza was a legitimate defense of its people and that it was Hamas that was guilty of genocide.
