Gaza/Doha, Qatar
Reuters
Israel’s latest attacks on Gaza have killed at least 151 people, including 11 in a single house, Palestinian health officials said on Friday, while the UN humanitarian office accused Israel of blocking its efforts to send aid to the north.
Residents reported continued aerial and ground fire across the territory from Israel, which has come under growing pressure to limit the number of civilian casualties from its war against the Hamas militants who attacked southern Israel on 7th October.
An Israeli tank manoeuvres in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from Israel, on 12th January, 2024. PICTURE: ReutersTyrone Siu
The Israeli government says it goes to great lengths to protect civilians, accusing Hamas of deliberately using them as human shields and diverting aid, allegations which the militants deny.
ISRAEL REJECTS GENOCIDE CHARGES, TELLS WORLD COURT IT MUST DEFEND ITSELF
Israel on Friday rejected as false and “grossly distorted” accusations brought by South Africa at the UN’s top court that its military operation in Gaza is a state-led genocide campaign against Palestinians.
Arguing it was acting to defend itself and was fighting Hamas, not the Palestinian population, Israel called on the International Court of Justice to dismiss the case as groundless and reject South Africa’s request to order it to halt the offensive.
“This is no genocide,” lawyer Malcolm Shaw said.
South Africa told the court on Thursday that Israel’s aerial and ground offensive – which has laid waste to much of the enclave and killed almost 24,000 people, according to Gaza health authorities – aimed to bring about “the destruction of the population” of Gaza.
Israel rejected the accusations, saying it respected international law and had a right to defend itself.
Israel launched its war in Gaza after a cross-border rampage on 7th October by militants from Hamas, which is sworn to Israel’s destruction. Israeli officials said 1,200 people were killed, mainly civilians, and 240 taken hostage.
“The appalling suffering of civilians, both Israeli and Palestinian, is first and foremost the result of Hamas’ strategy,” the Israeli foreign ministry’s legal adviser, Tal Becker told the court.
“If there were acts of genocide, they have been perpetrated against Israel,” Becker said. “Hamas seeks genocide against Israel.”
The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.
Israel, its defence team argued, was doing what it could to alleviate the humanitarian suffering in Gaza, including efforts to urge Palestinians to evacuate.
The court is expected to rule later this month on possible emergency measures – including South Africa’s request that it orders Israel to halt its offensive.
It will not rule at that time on the genocide accusations. Those proceedings could take years.
The ICJ’s decisions are final and without appeal, but the court has no way to enforce them.
Palestinian backers with flags marched through The Hague and watched proceedings on a giant screen in front of the Peace Palace. As the Israeli delegation spoke in court, they chanted: “Liar! Liar!”
Asked what she thought of Israel’s arguments that the Gaza campaign was a matter of self-defence, Neen Haijjawi, a Palestinian who recently came to Netherlands said: “How can an occupier that’s been oppressing people for 75 years say it’s self-defence?”
Israeli supporters were holding a separate gathering of family members of hostages taken by Hamas.
Israel has said South Africa is acting as a mouthpiece for Islamist Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union, Britain and several other nations. South Africa has rejected that accusation.
Since Israeli forces started their offensive, nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes at least once, leading to a humanitarian catastrophe.
Post-apartheid South Africa has long advocated the Palestinian cause, a relationship forged when the African National Congress’ struggle against white-minority rule was supported by Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation.
“My grandfather always regarded the Palestinian struggle as the greatest moral issue of our time,” Mandla Mandela, a grandson of the late South Africa president Nelson Mandela, said at a rally in support of the Palestinians in Cape Town.
– ANTHONY DEUTSCH, TOBY STERLING AND STEPHANIE VAN DEN BERG, The Hague, The Netherlands/Reuters.
Gaza health officials said the 11 people had been killed by a single air strike around dawn in a house in Deir Al-Balah belonging to the Fayad family, a prominent name in the city.
Israel said it could not comment without more specifics. It said earlier that its forces had killed dozens of militants in nearby Maghazi and in the southern city of Khan Younis. The armed wings of Hamas and fellow Islamists Islamic Jihad each said their fighters had hit Israeli tanks and bulldozers with anti-tank rockets in several areas where Israel was operating.
Palestinian medics said another Palestinian had been killed and several others wounded in an Israeli strike that targeted a group of people on a main road between the central and the southern areas of Gaza.
Residents and the telecommunications company said Friday’s fighting cut communications across Gaza.
Since the New Year, Israel has announced a new phase in the war, saying it will begin withdrawing its forces from the northern half of the Gaza Strip where they deployed three weeks after the militants rampaged through southern Israel.
Sporadic fighting has continued in the north and intensified in southern areas, where Israel extended its ground campaign to wipe out the militants last month and where the vast majority of Gazans have sought shelter on Israeli advice.
“Beyond comprehension”
The UN humanitarian office said Israeli authorities were blocking its efforts to help people who had stayed in the north for fear the militants would seize supplies.
“We have systematic refusal from the Israeli side of our effort to get there,” said Andrea De Domenico, head of office for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
“In particular, they have been very systematic to not allowing us to support hospitals, which is something that is reaching a level of inhumanity that, for me, is beyond comprehension,” he said.
Israel says it does not block aid and blames holdups on what it says are poor logistics by the UN and other aid agencies. Aid officials say Gazans are on the verge of starvation and suffering from diseases brought on by a lack of fresh water and sanitation due to widespread bombing.
As Israeli tanks redeploy in some areas, residents reveal the aftermath. In Al-Bureij – focus of Israeli ground operations in the central Gaza Strip – images posted by a local journalist showed the destruction of the main stadium.
Health officials said earlier that an overnight Israeli air strike in the Sabra suburb of Gaza City in the north had killed three people and wounded dozens. Civil emergency said intense Israeli fire had hampered efforts to reach them.
Gaza health officials said on Friday Israel’s offensive had killed 23,708 people and wounded more than 60,000, mostly civilians.
“Many victims are still under the rubble and on the roads. Rescue teams and civil emergency crews are unable to reach them,” Gaza health ministry spokesman, Ashraf Al-Qidra said, adding that the 151 reported dead were those brought to hospital.
Israel says it has no choice but to end Hamas rule in Gaza after the militants, who are sworn to Israel’s destruction, killed 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and took 240 hostages back to the territory.
Israeli military vehicles manoeuvre in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from Israel, on 12th January, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Tyrone Siu
More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza and Israel said on Friday it had made an arrangement with Qatar that will allow the delivery of medications to those hostages who need them.
At Gaza’s European hospital in Khan Younis, members of the Shaat family and others gathered to mourn the death of their loved ones who were killed in an Israeli strike further south in the narrow coastal strip.
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“The day before yesterday we were targeted by a rocket, so we were displaced near the sea. They went back (home) to take the rest of the stuff that we needed for the house,” said Samir Shaat, a relative of some of the victims.
“A first rocket targeted my brother and son. My nephews came to help them, but a second rocket hit them,” he said.
– With HENRIETTE CHACAR in Jerusalem and GABRIELLE TETRAULT-FARBER in Geneva, Switzerland
