2023

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — South Africa launched a case Friday at the United Nations’ top court accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and asking the court to order Israel to halt its attacks — the first such challenge made at the court over the current war. Israel swiftly rejected the filing “with disgust.”

South Africa’s submission to the International Court of Justice alleges that “acts and omissions by Israel … are genocidal in character” as they are committed with the intent “to destroy Palestinians in Gaza” as a part of the broader Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group.

South Africa has been a fierce critic of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Many there, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, have compared Israel’s policies regarding Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank with South Africa’s past apartheid regime of racial segregation. Israel rejects such allegations.

South Africa asked The Hague-based court to issue an interim order for Israel to immediately suspend its military operations in Gaza. A hearing into that request is likely in the coming days or weeks. The case, if it goes ahead, will take years, but an interim order could be issued within weeks.

The Israeli government rejected “with disgust” the genocide accusations, calling it a “blood libel.” A Foreign Ministry statement said South Africa’s case lacks a legal foundation and constitutes a “despicable and contemptuous exploitation” of the court.

Israel also accused South Africa of cooperating with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group behind the deadly Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war.

The statement also said Israel operates according to international law and focuses its military actions solely against Hamas, adding that the residents of Gaza are not an enemy. It asserted that it takes steps to minimize harm to civilians and to allow humanitarian aid to enter the territory.

South Africa can bring the case under the Genocide Convention because both it and Israel are signatories to it.

Whether the case will succeed in halting the war remains to be seen. While the court’s orders are legally binding, they are not always followed. In March 2022, the court ordered Russia to halt hostilities in Ukraine, a binding legal ruling that Moscow flouted as it pressed ahead with its attacks.

South Africa’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the country is “gravely concerned with the plight of civilians caught in the present Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip due to the indiscriminate use of force and forcible removal of inhabitants.”

The ministry added that there are “ongoing reports of international crimes, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes, being committed as well as reports that acts meeting the threshold of genocide or related crimes as defined in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, have been and may still be committed in the context of the ongoing massacres in Gaza.”

South Africa’s president earlier accused Israel of war crimes and acts “tantamount to genocide.” And South Africa last month pushed for the International Criminal Court, which also is based in The Hague, to investigate Israel’s actions in Gaza.

The ICC prosecutes individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, while the International Court of Justice settles disputes between nations.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry welcomed South Africa’s accusations against Israel. In a statement on social media, it urged the court to “immediately take action to protect Palestinian people and call on Israel, the occupying power, to halt its onslaught against the Palestinian people.”

Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said South Africa’s case “provides an important opportunity for the International Court of Justice to scrutinize Israel’s actions in Gaza using the Genocide Convention of 1948.” She said South Africa is looking to the United Nations’ highest judicial body “to provide clear, definitive answers on the question of whether Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.”

Jarrah stressed that the ICJ case “is not a criminal case against individual alleged perpetrators, and it does not involve the International Criminal Court (ICC), a separate body. But the ICJ case should also propel greater international support for impartial justice at the ICC and other credible venues.”

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Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war.

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By Simon Lewis

(Reuters) -The United Nations Security Council met on Friday to discuss the situation in Ukraine after Ukraine and its supporters requested an urgent meeting to address missile and drone strikes by Russia, after Moscow launched its biggest air attack of the war.

Russian strikes across Ukraine on Friday killed 31 civilians and wounded more than 160 others, according to officials, and Poland said a Russian missile appeared to have flown into its airspace before returning to Ukraine.

After the meeting got underway at 4 p.m. (2100 GMT), council members including the United States, France and Britain condemned the attacks on Ukraine.

The attacks were “a desperate and futile attempt by Russia to regain momentum” in its war with Ukraine, Britain’s ambassador to the UN Barbara Woodward told the council. “They will not succeed.”

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said earlier on X that Ukraine and three dozen other UN member states had requested the Security Council meeting after the attacks, “which resulted in multiple civilian casualties and heavy destruction of civilian infrastructure.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the attacks by Russia on Ukraine, spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

“Attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure violate international humanitarian law, are unacceptable and must end immediately,” Dujarric said.

(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Ronald Popeski; Editing by Leslie Adler and Daniel Wallis)

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WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s defense forces said an unknown object entered the country’s airspace Friday morning from the direction of Ukraine and then vanished off radars, and that all indications pointed to it being a Russian missile.

“Everything indicates that a Russian missile intruded in Poland’s airspace. It was monitored by us on radars and left the airspace. We have confirmation of this on radars and from allies” in NATO, said Poland’s armed forces chief, Gen. Wiesław Kukuła.

Poland’s defense forces said the object penetrated about 40 kilometers (24 miles) into its airspace and left it after less than three minutes. The defense forces said both its radar and NATO radar confirmed that the object left Polish airspace.

Kukula said steps were being taken to verify those findings and eliminate the possibility of a technical error.

There was no comment from Russian officials.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on X, formerly Twitter, that he had spoken with Poland’s president about the “missile incident” and said NATO was vigilant and monitoring the situation “as the facts are established.”

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke with the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau, Jacek Siewiera, to express the “United States’ solidarity with Poland, our close NATO ally, as it deals with reports of a missile temporarily entering Polish airspace,” the White House said.

Sullivan pledged technical assistance to Poland and assured that President Joe Biden was following the issue closely.

It was not immediately clear where the object disappeared from radar or in which direction it had been going. Troops were mobilized to identify and find it. There were no immediate reports of any explosion or casualties.

The governor of Lublin province in eastern Poland, Krzysztof Komorski, told the Onet news portal that the object appeared on radars near the town of Hrubieszow, where a border crossing with Ukraine is located. Komorski said he had no information to indicate it landed in Lublin province.

Poland’s border with Ukraine is also the European Union and NATO border with Ukraine.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk convened a meeting with the defense minister, military commanders and heads of national security bodies, followed by a meeting of the National Security Bureau with President Andrzej Duda, the supreme commander of Poland’s armed forces.

Duda said through an aide that there was “no threat at the moment” and nothing to suggest that ”anything bad” should be expected.

“The most important is that no one was hurt,” said the aide, Grazyna Ignaczak-Bandych.

On Friday, Ukrainian officials said Russia launched more than 100 missiles and dozens of drones against Ukrainian targets overnight in what an air force official called the biggest aerial barrage since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It was not clear whether the object that Poland reported was related to the barrage.

“As a result of such massive attacks, this can happen. The enemy is attacking our border territories, including in the west. This is another signal for our partners to strengthen the Ukrainian air defense,” Yurii Ihnat, spokesperson for Ukraine’s Air Force, said on national television about the incident.

Poland has been supporting Ukraine with military, humanitarian and political assistance.

This is not the first time an unauthorized object has entered Poland’s airspace from the direction of Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion. In November 2022, two men were killed when a missile struck the village of Przewodow, a few kilometers from the border. Western officials said they believed a Ukrainian air defense missile went astray.

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Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

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