Israel believes it's ‘beyond and above the law’: South Africa

Proceedings at the ICJ have resumed.

Professor Max du Plessis, a lawyer representing South Africa, made the following points: 

• Palestinians in Gaza, as a very substantial and important part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnic group, simply, but profoundly, are entitled to exist.
• What is happening in Gaza now is not correctly framed as a simple conflict between two parties.
• It entails, instead, destructive acts perpetrated by an occupying power, Israel, that has subjected the Palestinian people to an oppressive and prolonged violation of their rights to self-determination for more than half a century.
• Those violations occur in a world where Israel, for years, regarded itself as beyond and above the law.