In a hearing before the UN’s highest court, South Africa on Tuesday called Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians an “extreme form of apartheid” and argued that its occupation of territory sought for an eventual Palestinian state was “fundamentally illegal.”
The hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague is one of two matters being heard about Israel, part of a concerted effort to leverage the court’s authority and the U.N.’s global reach to stop the war in Gaza and examine the legality. of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians.
Starting this week and for six days, the court will hear arguments about Israel’s conduct, following a request from the United Nations General Assembly more than a year ago. In the other matter, a case that began in January, South Africa accuses Israel of committing genocide in its ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has strongly rejected those accusations.
The latest proceedings, which began on Monday, focus on the legality of Israel’s “occupation, settlement and annexation” of majority-Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem. South Africa and many other countries that have asked to appear before the court argue that Israel’s decades-long occupation violates the Palestinians’ right to self-determination and that its security apparatus, including a giant wall, amounts to racial segregation.
More than 50 countries and three regional blocs are scheduled to debate before the 15-judge court over the next week, a level of participation never before seen at the court.
Hearings on Israel’s policies have taken on urgency amid the bloodshed of the war in Gaza. They come less than a month after the court ordered Israel to limit its attacks on Hamas-controlled territory in the genocide case.
The court is expected to answer questions about the legality of Israel’s conduct with an advisory opinion that will not be binding.
Palestinians “continue to be subjected to discriminatory zoning and land-planning policies, punitive home demolitions and violent incursions into their villages, towns and cities,” said South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusi Madonsela, in a speech to the court on Tuesday.
Israel has long rejected accusations that it operates an apartheid system, calling them defamation and pointing to a history of being singled out for condemnation by U.N. bodies and courts.
Also on Tuesday, the U.N.’s 22-nation Arab Group presented a resolution to the Security Council calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The United States vetoed the resolution for the third time.
Israel said it would not participate in this week’s hearings in The Hague, saying the premise before the court was unjustified and biased. Last year, Israel submitted a letter to the court arguing that the focus of the process was not to “recognize Israel’s right and duty to protect its citizens,” nor to recognize Israel’s security nor to take into account years of agreements. with the Palestinians to negotiate “the permanent status of the territory, security agreements, settlements and borders.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement Monday that the case is “part of the Palestinian attempt to dictate the results of the political agreement without negotiations.”
The war in Gaza, which the Gaza Health Ministry says has killed more than 29,000 people and which began with the Hamas-led terrorist attack last year against southern Israel that killed 1,200, is at the forefront of people’s minds. of the public, but it is not the most relevant war for present audiences.
Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt in a 1967 war with its Arab neighbors. Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005. It considers parts of the occupied West Bank to be disputed territory and has built settlements there, which much of the world considers illegal. After the 1967 war, Israel formally annexed East Jerusalem and considers the unified city its capital.
South Africa and other speakers have argued that the proliferation of Jewish settlements, many of which are full-fledged cities, suggests that the occupation is not temporary, but permanent.
Support for the Palestinians has long been a popular rallying cry in South Africa and its ruling party, the African National Congress, has often compared Israel’s policies to those of apartheid South Africa.
In his arguments Tuesday, Madonsela, the South African diplomat, recalled his country’s history of racial segregation and invoked one of apartheid’s most famous critics, Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Citing separate court systems, land zoning rules, roads and housing rights for Palestinians, he said Israel had established a “two-tier system of laws, rules and services” that benefits Jewish settlers and the at the same time “denies the rights of the Palestinians.”
Madonsela cited a 2010 statement by Archbishop Tutu, in which the Nobel laureate said that Israel maintains a system for the “two populations of the West Bank, which provides preferential services, development and benefits to Jewish settlers while imposing harsh conditions on settlers.” Palestinians. This, in my opinion, is apartheid. It is unsustainable.”
South Africans see “an even more extreme form of apartheid that was institutionalized against black people in my country,” Madonsela said. She said South Africa had a special obligation to denounce apartheid practices wherever they occurred. She also called on Israel to dismantle the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank, which the court had ordered removed in 2004 and which still stands.
The United States is scheduled to present its arguments on Wednesday.
It is expected to take approximately five months for the judges to issue their advisory opinion.