Greater than 50 nations are collaborating within the proceedings, which is able to run via this week. On Tuesday, 10 nations had been within the docket with their displays — and all, together with the Netherlands and Belgium, largely condemned the underlying insurance policies of Israeli occupation and settlement that result in what myriad rights teams allege is systemic racial discrimination and apartheid. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians within the West Financial institution reside with out the identical political and civil rights as their Israeli neighbors, whereas Gaza has weathered years of financial blockade.
Representatives from South Africa — which is behind a separate ICJ case alleging that Israel is violating the Genocide Conference because it prosecutes its conflict towards Hamas in Gaza after the militant group’s Oct. 7 strike on Israel — stated the Jewish state was practising an much more “excessive” type of apartheid than what was endured for many years in South Africa and known as on the court docket to supply a ruling that pressures Israel into making political concessions to the Palestinians.
“A transparent authorized characterization of the character of Israel’s regime over the Palestinian individuals can solely help in remedying the continued delay and attaining a simply settlement,” Vusimuzi Madonsela, South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, advised the judges.
Saudi Arabia’s consultant insisted that “there might be no severe debate that Israeli insurance policies and practices additionally quantity to racial discrimination and are tantamount to apartheid, in grave violation of the Palestinian individuals’s human rights.” And a dignitary from Djibouti stated many years of Israeli occupation within the West Financial institution had the “impact of systematically discriminating towards the Palestinian inhabitants — in favor of the Jewish inhabitants residing in settlements.”
The day earlier than, the Palestinian delegation laid out its claims. “The Palestinians have endured colonialism and apartheid,” Palestinian Overseas Minister Riyad al-Maliki stated. “There are those that are enraged by these phrases. They need to be enraged by the truth we’re struggling.”
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, choked again tears whereas urging the court docket “to information the worldwide group in upholding worldwide legislation, ending injustice and attaining a simply and lasting peace” and towards “a future during which Palestinian kids are handled as kids, not as a demographic risk.”
The US is predicted to mount a protection of Israel in The Hague on Wednesday. Israel itself shouldn’t be attending these hearings, not like the separate case concerning genocide and the Gaza conflict. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s workplace stated in a assertion on social media that it doesn’t acknowledge the listening to’s legitimacy, calling it an infringement on ‘Israel’s proper to defend itself towards existential threats,’” my colleagues famous.
Within the coming months, the court docket will subject a nonbinding opinion which will have solely minimal authorized affect. On the finish of the final month, the ICJ issued “provisional measures” calling on Israel to restrain its offensive in Gaza, which has killed at the very least 29,000 Palestinians, flattened Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and displaced the majority of the enclave’s inhabitants. However that ruling seems to have achieved little to rein in Israel, which continues to be getting ready for an assault on the southern Gazan border metropolis of Rafah the place greater than one million Gazan refugees are camped out in determined situations.
Throughout the pond, officers on the U.N.’s high decision-making physique as soon as extra didn’t discover a approach ahead. The US vetoed an Algerian-led Safety Council decision calling for a right away cease-fire in Gaza and the discharge of all hostages in Hamas captivity. The Biden administration discovered itself alone within the vote, with 13 nations, together with allies akin to France and Japan, voting in favor of the decision and Britain abstaining.
“A vote in favor of this draft decision is help to the Palestinians’ proper to life,” Algeria’s U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama stated earlier than the vote. “Conversely, voting towards it implies an endorsement of the brutal violence and collective punishment inflicted upon them.”
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield described the decision as “wishful and irresponsible” in an announcement and floated a watered-down proposal calling for a “short-term” truce extra immediately linked to the discharge of all hostages. Netanyahu, in the meantime, dug in his heels: “We’re dedicated to persevering with the conflict till we obtain all of its objectives,” he stated. “There is no such thing as a stress, none, that may change this.”
What’s additionally not altering is the rising world notion that Israel is at odds with the worldwide system and reliant on the US to defend it from additional censure. Israeli officers had been incensed by U.N. Secretary Common António Guterres’s declare final 12 months that the Hamas assault on Oct. 7 didn’t happen in a “vacuum” — an statement which Israel argued was justifying Hamas terrorism.
However this week’s proceedings in The Hague dig into what Guterres was invoking, reckoning with greater than a half century of deeper, tragic context. The present drumbeat of maximum rhetoric from Netanyahu’s political allies to the appropriate — together with rejections of any speak of Palestinian statehood or equal political rights, calls to hold out de facto ethnic cleaning in Gaza and even denials of the existence of the Palestinian individuals — gives a reminder of the parallel dialog going down inside Israel.
“Successive Israeli governments have given the Palestinian individuals solely three choices: displacement, subjugation or demise,” Maliki, the Palestinian envoy, advised the judges. “However our individuals are right here to remain, they’ve a proper to reside in freedom and dignity of their ancestral land. They won’t forsake their rights.”
