To better understand the latest events in the conflict between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel, 20 minutes takes stock every evening. Between the strong declarations, the diplomatic advances or the dramatic results of the fighting, here are the main points of the day.
The fact of the day
This is a landmark court case. South Africa on Thursday accused Israel of violating the United Nations Convention on Genocide, saying that even the Hamas attack on October 7 could not justify the events in Gaza. Pretoria has urgently appealed to the highest court of the UN to order Israel to “immediately suspend its military operations” in the Gaza Strip.
Israel, which will speak on Friday before the magistrates of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), whose seat is in The Hague, described the case as “absurd” and “atrocious” and accused Pretoria on Thursday of behave like “the legal arm of the terrorist organization Hamas”.
“We are not presenting any case on behalf of Hamas, this statement is baseless. We do this on behalf of the Palestinians, children, women and elderly people who are being killed in Gaza,” replied South African Justice Minister Ronald Lamola. Israel’s bombing campaign is aimed at “the destruction of Palestinian lives” and is pushing Palestinians “to the brink of starvation”, said South Africa’s lawyer Adila Hassim.
The number of the day
2. Hamza Dahdouh and Moustafa Thuraya were journalists from Al Jazeera. They were killed in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip on Sunday. On Wednesday evening, the Israeli military declared them to be “terrorist agents” affiliated with the Hamas movement and its ally Islamic Jihad. “Prior to the strike, the two were piloting drones that posed an imminent threat to Israeli troops,” the army said in a statement. Hamas, relatives of the victims and journalists have denied this assertion.
Sentence of the day
Israel is accused of genocide at a time when it is fighting genocide”
This is a statement from Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli Prime Minister was moved this Thursday that his country was accused before the International Court of Justice of genocide by South Africa.
“A terrorist organization has committed the worst crime against the Jewish people since the Holocaust and now someone is coming to defend them in the name of the Holocaust. What nerve ! “, he declared while the Israeli bombings, provoked by the bloody Hamas attack, left nearly 23,500 dead in Gaza, the majority women and children.
Today’s trend
The situation is worsening on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Two rescuers from an organization linked to Hezbollah were killed Thursday in an Israeli strike on their center in southern Lebanon, said the powerful movement, which said it had carried out bombings in northern Israel in retaliation.
Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which began on October 7, there have been daily exchanges of fire on the border between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas. Clashes have increased in intensity since the strike attributed to Israel on January 2, which killed Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, and six other officials and executives of the Palestinian movement, in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
An American envoy called Thursday in Beirut for a “diplomatic solution” between Lebanon and Israel. Of course, however, both countries are willing to stop the bombings…