South Africa told the Unit­ed Na­tions’ top court on Thurs­day the sit­u­a­tion in Gaza has reached “a new and hor­rif­ic stage” as it sought emer­gency mea­sures to halt Is­rael’s mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion in the en­clave’s south­ern city of Rafah.

It was the third time the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice held hear­ings on the con­flict in Gaza since South Africa filed pro­ceed­ings at The Hague-based court in De­cem­ber ac­cus­ing Is­rael of geno­cide.

“Sev­en months ago, South Africa could not have imag­ined that Gaza would be large­ly wiped off the map,” the coun­try’s am­bas­sador to the Nether­lands, Vusimuzi Madon­sela, told the pan­el of 15 in­ter­na­tion­al judges Thurs­day.

Dur­ing hear­ings ear­li­er this year, Is­rael strong­ly de­nied com­mit­ting geno­cide in Gaza, say­ing it does all it can to spare civil­ians and is on­ly tar­get­ing Hamas mil­i­tants. The coun­try says Rafah is the last strong­hold of the mil­i­tant group.

South Africa ar­gues that the mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion has far sur­passed jus­ti­fied self-de­fense.

“Is­rael’s ac­tions in Rafah are part of the end game. This is the last step in the de­struc­tion of Gaza,” lawyer Vaugh­an Lowe said.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est re­quest, the pre­vi­ous pre­lim­i­nary or­ders by The Hague-based court were not suf­fi­cient to ad­dress “a bru­tal mil­i­tary at­tack on the sole re­main­ing refuge for the peo­ple of Gaza.” Is­rael will be al­lowed to an­swer the ac­cu­sa­tions on Fri­day.

In Jan­u­ary, judges or­dered Is­rael to do all it can to pre­vent death, de­struc­tion and any acts of geno­cide in Gaza, but the pan­el stopped short of or­der­ing an end to the mil­i­tary of­fen­sive that has laid waste to the Pales­tin­ian en­clave. In a sec­ond or­der in March, the court said Is­rael must take mea­sures to im­prove the hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion.

South Africa has to date sub­mit­ted four re­quests for the in­ter­na­tion­al court to in­ves­ti­gate Is­rael. It was grant­ed a hear­ing three times.

Palestinians displaced by the Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip walk through a makeshift tent camp in Rafah, Gaza, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

Most of Gaza’s pop­u­la­tion of 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple have been dis­placed since fight­ing be­gan.

The war be­gan with a Hamas at­tack on south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7 in which Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants killed around 1,200 peo­ple and took about 250 hostages. Gaza’s Health Min­istry says over 35,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in the war, with­out dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its count.

South Africa ini­ti­at­ed pro­ceed­ings in De­cem­ber 2023 and sees the le­gal cam­paign as root­ed in is­sues cen­tral to its iden­ti­ty. Its gov­ern­ing par­ty, the African Na­tion­al Con­gress, has long com­pared Is­rael’s poli­cies in Gaza and the oc­cu­pied West Bank to its own his­to­ry un­der the apartheid regime of white mi­nor­i­ty rule, which re­strict­ed most Blacks to “home­lands.” Apartheid end­ed in 1994.

On Sun­day, Egypt an­nounced it plans to join the case. The Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs said Is­raeli mil­i­tary ac­tions “con­sti­tute a fla­grant vi­o­la­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law, hu­man­i­tar­i­an law, and the Fourth Gene­va Con­ven­tion of 1949 re­gard­ing the pro­tec­tion of civil­ians dur­ing wartime.”

Sev­er­al coun­tries have al­so in­di­cat­ed they plan to in­ter­vene, but so far on­ly Libya, Nicaragua and Colom­bia have filed for­mal re­quests to do so. —THE HAGUE (AP)

________

Sto­ry by MOL­LY QUELL | As­so­ci­at­ed Press