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Israel to Appear before ICJ to Counter South Africa’s Gaza Case

A man rides a scooter past a sticker depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a street in Tel Aviv, Israel January 2, 2024. (Reuters)
A man rides a scooter past a sticker depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a street in Tel Aviv, Israel January 2, 2024. (Reuters)
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Israel to Appear before ICJ to Counter South Africa’s Gaza Case

A man rides a scooter past a sticker depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a street in Tel Aviv, Israel January 2, 2024. (Reuters)
A man rides a scooter past a sticker depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a street in Tel Aviv, Israel January 2, 2024. (Reuters)

Israel will appear before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague to contest South Africa's genocide accusations over the war with Hamas in Gaza, an Israeli government spokesman said on Tuesday.

South Africa asked the ICJ on Friday for an urgent order declaring that Israel was in breach of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its crackdown against Hamas.

"The State of Israel will appear before the International Court of Justice at The Hague to dispel South Africa's absurd blood libel," spokesman Eylon Levy told an online briefing.

"We assure South Africa's leaders, history will judge you, and it will judge you without mercy," Levy said.

South Africa has for decades backed the Palestinian cause for statehood in Israeli-occupied territories. It has likened the plight of Palestinians to those of the Black majority in South Africa during the apartheid era, a comparison Israel strongly denies.

The ICJ, sometimes known as the World Court, is the United Nations venue for resolving disputes between states. Israel's foreign ministry has said the suit was "baseless."

Lawyers representing South Africa are preparing for the hearing scheduled on Jan. 11 and 12, Clayson Monyela, a spokesperson for South Africa's Department of International Relations and Cooperation, said in a post on the platform X.

The war was triggered by a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, which Israel says killed 1,200 people.

Israel responded with an air and land assault that has killed more than 22,000 people, Palestinian health officials say. While its casualty figures do not differentiate between fighters and civilians, the ministry has said that 70% of Gaza's dead are women and those under 18. Israel disputes Palestinian casualty figures and says it has killed 8,000 fighters.

Levy listed a series of measures Israel's military has taken to minimize harm to non-combatants.

He said Hamas bore full moral responsibility for the war it started and was "waging from inside and underneath hospitals, schools, mosques, homes and UN facilities", Levy said.

He added, without elaborating, that South Africa was complicit in Hamas' crimes against Israelis.

Hamas denies using Gaza's population as human shields.

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Urgency Mounts in Search for Survivors of Powerful Tibet Earthquake

This handout received on January 7, 2025 shows damaged houses in Shigatse, southwestern China's Tibet region, after an earthquake hit the area. (AFP photo / Handout)
This handout received on January 7, 2025 shows damaged houses in Shigatse, southwestern China's Tibet region, after an earthquake hit the area. (AFP photo / Handout)
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Urgency Mounts in Search for Survivors of Powerful Tibet Earthquake

This handout received on January 7, 2025 shows damaged houses in Shigatse, southwestern China's Tibet region, after an earthquake hit the area. (AFP photo / Handout)
This handout received on January 7, 2025 shows damaged houses in Shigatse, southwestern China's Tibet region, after an earthquake hit the area. (AFP photo / Handout)

Over 400 people trapped by rubble in earthquake-stricken Tibet were rescued, Chinese officials said on Wednesday, with an unknown number still unaccounted for after a tremor rocked the Himalayan foothills and shifted the region's landscape.

The epicenter of Tuesday's magnitude 6.8 quake, one of the region's most powerful tremors in recent years, was located in Tingri in China's Tibet, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain. It also shook buildings in neighboring Nepal, Bhutan and India.

The quake was so strong that part of the terrain at and around the epicenter slipped as much as 1.6m (5.2 feet) over a distance of 80 km (50 miles), according to an analysis by the United States Geological Survey.

Twenty-four hours after the temblor struck, those trapped under rubble would have endured a night in sub-zero temperatures, adding to the pressure on rescuers looking for survivors in an area the size of Cambodia.

Temperatures in the high-altitude region dropped as low as minus 18 degrees Celsius (0 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight. People trapped or those without shelter are at risk of rapid hypothermia and may only be able to live for five to 10 hours even if uninjured, experts say.

At least 126 people were known to have been killed and 188 injured on the Tibetan side, state broadcaster CCTV reported. No deaths have been reported in Nepal or elsewhere.

Chinese authorities have yet to announce how many people are still missing. In Nepal, an official told Reuters the quake destroyed a school building in a village near Mount Everest, which straddles the Nepali-Tibetan border. No one was inside at the time.

German climber Jost Kobusch said he was just above the Everest base camp on the Nepali side when the quake struck. His tent shook violently and he saw several avalanches crash down. He was unscathed.

"I'm climbing Everest in the winter by myself and...looks like basically I'm the only mountaineer there, in the base camp there's nobody," Kobusch told Reuters in a video call.

His expedition organizing company, Satori Adventure, said Kobusch had left the base camp and was descending to Namche Bazaar on Wednesday on the way to Kathmandu.

But in Tibet, the damage was extensive.

An initial survey showed 3,609 homes had been destroyed in the Shigatse region, home to 800,000 people, state media reported late on Tuesday. Over 1,800 emergency rescue personnel and 1,600 soldiers had been deployed.

Footage broadcast on CCTV showed families huddled in rows of blue and green tents quickly erected by soldiers and aid workers in settlements surrounding the epicenter, where hundreds of aftershocks have been recorded.

State media said over 30,000 people affected by the quake had been relocated.

Home to some 60,000 people, Tingri is Tibet's most populous county on China's border with Nepal and is administered from the city of Shigatse, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism.

No damage has been reported to Shigatse's Tashilhunpo monastery, state media reported, founded in 1447 by the first Dalai Lama.

The 14th and current Dalai Lama, along with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Taiwan President Lai Ching-te, have expressed condolences to the earthquake's victims.

500 AFTERSHOCKS

Southwestern parts of China, Nepal and northern India are often hit by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which are pushing up an ancient sea that is now the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau.

More than 500 aftershocks with magnitudes of up to 4.4 had followed the quake as of 8 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Wednesday, the China Earthquake Networks Centre said.

Over the past five years, there have been 29 quakes with magnitudes of 3 or above within 200 km (120 miles) of the epicenter of Tuesday's temblor, according to local earthquake bureau data.

Tuesday's quake was the worst in China since a 6.2 magnitude earthquake in 2023 that killed at least 149 people in a remote northwestern region.

In 2008, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake hit Sichuan, claiming the lives of at least 70,000 people, the deadliest quake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan quake that killed at least 242,000.