The UN’s top legal body has now heard two days of powerful legal argument on the “crime of all crimes”: genocide.
It is now for the judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to decide whether Israel, in its war in Gaza, is guilty of an attempt to “destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part,” as defined by the 1948 Convention on Genocide.
There could hardly be a more weighty matter.
Both sides have played heavily on the strong emotions swirling around the conflict that erupted on 7 October last year.
Around 1,300 people – most of them civilians – were killed and about 240 others were taken hostage during the Hamas attack on southern Israel.
