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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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World

Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
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Huge Power Outage Paralyzes Parts of Spain and Portugal

This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)
This photograph shows a flamenco dress factory without light and workers during a massive power cut affecting the entire Iberian peninsula and the south of France, in Seville on April 28, 2025. (AFP)

A huge power outage hit large parts of Spain and Portugal on Monday, paralyzing traffic, grounding flights, trapping people in elevators and leaving power operators scrambling to restore power to millions of homes and businesses.

Some hospitals halted routine work and the two countries' governments convened emergency cabinet meetings, with officials initially saying a possible cyber-attack could not be ruled out. Outages on such a scale are extremely rare in Europe, and the cause could not immediately be established.

Reuters witnesses said power had started returning to the Basque country and Barcelona areas of Spain in the early afternoon, a few hours after the outage began. It was not clear when power might be more widely restored.

Hospitals in Madrid and Cataluna in Spain suspended all routine medical work but were still attending to critical patients, using backup generators. Several Spanish oil refineries were shut down and retail businesses shut.

The Bank of Spain said electronic banking was functioning "adequately" on backup systems, though residents also reported ATM screens had gone blank.

"I'm in a data center, and everything has gone off. All the alarms popped up, and now we're with the groups, waiting to find out what happened," said Barcelona resident and engineer Jose Maria Espejo, 40.

In a video posted on X, Madrid Mayor Jose Luis Martinez-Almeida urged city residents to minimize their journeys and stay where they were, adding: "It is essential that the emergency services can circulate."

In Portugal, water supplier EPAL said water supplies could also be disrupted, and queues formed at stores by people rushing to purchase emergency supplies like gaslights, generators and batteries.

The main Portuguese electricity utility, EDP, said it had told customers it had no forecast for when the energy supply would be "normalized", Publico newspaper said. It warned it could take several hours.

Parts of France also suffered a brief outage. RTE, the French grid operator, said it had moved to supplement power to some parts of northern Spain after the outage hit.

Play at the Madrid Open tennis tournament was suspended, forcing 15th seed Grigor Dimitrov and British opponent Jacob Fearnley off the court as scoreboards went dark and overhead cameras lost power.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Spanish radio stations said part of the Madrid underground was being evacuated. There were traffic jams in Madrid city center as traffic lights stopped working, Cader Ser Radio station reported.

Hundreds of people stood outside office buildings on Madrid’s streets and there was a heavy police presence around key buildings, directing traffic as well as driving along central atriums with lights, according to a Reuters witness.

One of four tower buildings in Madrid that houses the British Embassy had been evacuated, the witness added.

Local radio reported people trapped in stalled metro cars and elevators.

Portuguese police said traffic lights were affected across the country, the metro was closed in Lisbon and Porto, and trains were not running.

Lisbon's subway transport operator Metropolitano de Lisboa said the subway was at a standstill with people still inside the trains, according to Publico newspaper.

A source at Portugal's TAP Air said Lisbon airport was running on back-up generators, while AENA, which manages 46 airports in Spain, reported flight delays around the country.

Such widespread outages are unusual in Europe. In 2003 a problem with a hydroelectric power line between Italy and Switzerland caused a major outage across the whole Italian peninsula for around 12 hours.

In 2006 an overloaded power network in Germany caused electricity cuts across parts of the country and in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and as far as Morocco.