Israel has denied the genocide accusations being presented by South Africa at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Thursday as baseless and accused Pretoria of playing "advocate of the devil" for Hamas.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on social media platform X: "I want to make a few points absolutely clear: Israel has no intention of permanently occupying Gaza or displacing its civilian population."
In its court filings, South Africa cites Israel's failure to provide food, water, medicine and other essential assistance to Gaza, where Hamas seized power in 2007.
South Africa and Israel are both parties to the convention, which obliges them to not commit genocide and also to prevent and punish it.
“Today, we witnessed one of the greatest shows of hypocrisy in history, compounded by false and baseless claims,” Israel's Foreign Ministry said in a statement after the trial had ended. “South Africa, which is functioning as the legal arm of the Hamas terrorist organization, utterly distorted the reality in Gaza following the October 7 massacre and completely ignored the fact that Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel, murdered, executed, massacred, raped and abducted Israeli citizens, simply because they were Israelis, in an attempt to carry out genocide.
"Enabling Hamas war crimes"
“South Africa seeks to allow Hamas to return to commit the war crimes, crimes against humanity and sexual crimes they committed repeatedly on October 7, as its leaders have stated."
"The hypocritical discussion taking place today in the Hague highlights [how]... the Hague court, like other international tribunals, are political bodies tainted with antisemitism and repeatedly exposed in amazing displays of hypocrisy," said right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. "The only ones who should stand trial in The Hague and everywhere are the Nazi Hamas terrorists who committed the horrific massacre against Israeli citizens.
"We will destroy Hamas," he concluded. "This is a war of good against evil, of the enlightened world against the dark one — all of us together. There is no juster war than this."
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said in a recorded statement: “It is not Israel that is on trial today, but the integrity of the international community. If a country that protects itself from a brutal, murderous terrorist attack can find itself in court for genocide, then the Genocide Convention has become a reward for terrorism.”
Rina Bassist, Zvika Klein contributed to this report.