“Yesterday, the first day of the hearings, was quite in-depth with Palestine given ample time by President Yuji Iwasawa and a 13-strong judging panel to give its argument,” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports from The Hague, Netherlands.

“Today, the pace really picks up. We have nine countries going before the panel, each being allocated half an hour to speak,” he said.

“We have South Africa, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Colombia in the morning session. And then in the afternoon, we have Bolivia, Brazil, Chile and Spain.

“So, what to watch out for in all of this? South Africa is going to kick off this morning because it has been very critical of Israel over the past two-three years and brought the genocide case at the International Court of Justice in December 2023.

“Then, perhaps look out for Belgium and Spain. The EU member countries will give some indication of what the bloc thinks about this. Though because of the power outage in Spain, the Spanish delegation might have some difficulties in coming here,” Challands said.

“But tomorrow perhaps is going to be a more telling day. We will have US and Hungary speaking and they were two countries who voted against this whole thing from taking place at the UN General Assembly last year.

“So, they are likely to be supportive of Israel, perhaps the only two countries speaking over this process that will be supportive of Israel. But we also have Russia and France speaking tomorrow and they will be worth watching out for too.”