PARIS — At a hearing before
the United Nations’ highest court, South Africa on Tuesday called Israel’s
policies toward Palestinians an “extreme form of apartheid” and argued that its
occupation of the territory sought for an eventual Palestinian state was
“fundamentally illegal.”
اضافة اعلان
The hearing at the
International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, is one of two matters
being heard about Israel, part of a concerted effort to leverage the authority
of the court and the global reach of the U.N. to stop the war in the Gaza Strip
and examine the legality of Israel’s policies toward Palestinians.
Starting this week and
lasting six days, the court is hearing arguments on Israel’s conduct, following
a request by the UN 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 war against Hamas in Gaza.
Israel has strongly rejected
those accusations.
The latest proceedings, which
began Monday, focus on the legality of Israel’s “occupation, settlement, and
annexation” of Palestinian-majority territories, including the West Bank and
East Jerusalem. South Africa and many other countries that have asked to
address the court argue that Israel’s decadeslong occupation violates the
Palestinians’ right to self-determination and that its security apparatus,
including a wall, amounts to racial segregation.
More than 50 countries and
three regional blocs are scheduled to argue before the 15-judge bench over the
next week, a level of participation never before seen at the court.
The hearings on Israel’s
policies have gained urgency amid the bloodshed of the war in Gaza. They come
less than a month after the court ordered Israel to restrain its attacks in the
Hamas-controlled territory in the genocide case.
The court is expected to
answer the questions on the legality of Israel’s conduct with an advisory
opinion that will be nonbinding.
Palestinians “continue to be
subjected to discriminating land-zoning and planning policies, to punitive
house demolitions and violent incursions into their villages, towns, and
cities,” South Africa’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusi Madonsela, said in
an address to the court Tuesday.
Israel has long rejected
accusations that it operates an apartheid system, calling such allegations a
slur and pointing to a history of being singled out for condemnation by UN
bodies and tribunals.
Also on Tuesday, the
22-nation Arab Group of the UN submitted a resolution to the Security Council
calling for an immediate cease-fire 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 unwarranted and biased. Last year, Israel delivered a letter to the
court in which it argued that the focus of the proceedings failed to “recognize
Israel’s right and duty to protect its citizens,” to recognize Israel’s
security, or to take into account years of agreements with the Palestinians to
negotiate “the permanent status of the territory, security arrangements,
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 said has killed more than 26,000 people since October 7.
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 considered the unified city its
capital.
South Africa and other
speakers have argued that the proliferation of Jewish settlements, many of
which are full-fledged towns, suggests that the occupation is not temporary,
but permanent.
Support for the Palestinian
people has long been a popular rallying cry in South Africa, and its governing
party, the African National Congress, has often compared Israel’s policies to
those of apartheid-era 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 the separate court
systems, land-zoning rules, roads, and housing rights for Palestinians, he said
Israel had put in place a “two-tier system of laws, rules, and services” that
benefit Jewish settlers while “denying Palestinians rights.”
Madonsela quoted a 2010
statement from Tutu in which the Nobel laureate said Israel maintains a system
for the “two populations in the West Bank, which provides preferential
services, development and benefits for Jewish settlers while imposing harsh
conditions on Palestinians. This, in my book, is apartheid. It is untenable.”
South Africans see “an even
more extreme form of the apartheid that was institutionalized against Black
people in my country,” Madonsela said. He said that South Africa had a special
obligation to call out apartheid practices wherever they occur. He also called
on Israel to dismantle the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank,
which the court had ordered be removed in 2004 and still stands.
The US is scheduled to make
arguments on Wednesday.
The judges are expected to
take five months to issue their advisory opinion.
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