Israel defended its military operation in Gaza as the International Court of Justice on Friday held a third round of hearings on emergency measures requested by South Africa, which wants the court to order a cease-fire.
\n“Some engagement on the facts, but not really rebutting what South Africa is trying to assert is essentially trying to detract and blame, you know, or cast political aspersions on the intentions of South Africa,” said Zane Dangor, Director-General of South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.
\nSouth Africa told the court on Thursday that the situation in the beleaguered enclave has reached \u201ca new and horrific stage\u201d and urged judges to order a half to Israeli military operations.
\nLawyer Tamar Kaplan-Tourgeman defended Israel\u2019s conduct in Gaza, saying it had allowed in fuel and medication.
\nIsrael\u2019s delegation was noticeably smaller than during previous hearings.
\nAccording to Israel\u2019s deputy attorney general Gilad Noam, a number of their lawyers were not available on such short notice.
\nThe country was informed on Monday that hearings would be held on Thursday and Friday.
\nSouth Africa has submitted four requests for the ICJ to investigate Israel.
\nThe court has already found that there is a \u201creal and imminent risk\u201d to the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israel\u2019s military operations.
\nAccording to the latest request, the country says Israel\u2019s military incursion in Rafah threatens the \u201cvery survival of Palestinians in Gaza.\u201d
\nIn 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.
\nICJ judges have broad powers to order a cease-fire and other measures, though the court doesn\u2019t have its own enforcement apparatus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israel defended its military operation in Gaza as the International Court of Justice on Friday held a third round of hearings on emergency measures requested by South Africa, which wants the court to order a cease-fire. “Some engagement on the facts, but not really rebutting what South Africa is trying to assert is essentially trying …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22173,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22165\/revisions\/22173"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}