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Analysis

[Headline] South Africa’s case was ‘very impressive’

Thomas MacManus, senior lecturer in state crime at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, tells Al Jazeera that South Africa’s case was “very impressive”.

“They set out in a very concise way some devastating accusations strung together in such a legally sound way,” MacManus said, adding that he was impressed by the way its representatives presented the conduct and intent as well as their points related to jurisdiction.

South Africa’s arguments related to the urgency of the case, MacManus said, will be “the most devastating” from Israel’s point of view.ALT
[Headline] ‘ICJ heard most detailed, gruesome case in its history’

By Step Vaessen / Reporting from The Hague

We have just listened to three hours of very detailed descriptions of what South Africa says is a very compelling case of genocide that Israel is now committing in Gaza.

South Africa is asking the court to quickly decide on urgent provisional measures to ask Israel to stop whatever it is doing: Military action, mass displacement, depriving Gazans of food, shelter, water, and basic healthcare.

Historians, who have been following the ICJ for many years, say that this is the most detailed, most gruesome case so far.ALT
[Headline] South Africa’s case ‘extremely compelling’

Speaking to Al Jazeera outside the court in The Hague, professor Alanna O’Malley says, “This is a historic case.”

“We see from the invocation of the various articles of the Genocide Convention by the South African legal team the ways in which they are going to structurally present this case,” she said, calling it “extremely compelling” and “well organised”.

“We’ve heard only three parts so far of the whole, we see the evidence in both video and in image to be extremely powerful. We also see the evidence gathered from a variety of sources which really adds to its veracity and its strength.”ALT
Analysis

[Headline] South Africa’s lawyers showed Israel’s genocidal war did not start on October 7

Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara says it was very important that South Africa’s lawyers started out by showing the history and context of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

They showed that “what we see today unravelling in front of our eyes – the genocide – did not start on October 7, that there is a long history of genocide and apartheid, discrimination, hate speech, war crimes and so on since 1948”, he said.

“The second thing that was very important was that it showed there was a pattern on the part of Israelis both since October 7 and before to actually cause harm to the Palestinian people as a collective.”ALT

from al jazeeras live reporting of the first ICJ hearing, 11 Jan 2024