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ICJ orders Israel to halt assault on Gaza's
Rafah, saying conditions met for new emergency order
Judges at the top United Nations (UN) court ordered
Israel on Friday to halt its military assault on the southern Gaza city of
Rafah, reports Reuters.
Reading out
a ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) or world court, the body’s
president Nawaf Salam said provisional measures ordered by the court in March
did not fully address the situation in Gaza now, and conditions had been met
for a new emergency order.
“Israel
must immediately halt its military offensive” in Rafah, he said.
The court
backed a South African request to order Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah,
a week after Pretoria called for the measure in a case accusing Israel of
genocide.
Reuters
reports that outside the court, a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators
waved flags and played a rap on a boom box calling for a free Palestine.
Israel has
repeatedly dismissed the case’s accusations of genocide as baseless, arguing in
court that its operations in Gaza are self-defence and targeted at Hamas
militants who attacked Israel on 7 October.
An Israeli
government spokesperson said on the eve of Friday’s decision that “no power on
Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in
Gaza”.
Israel
launched its assault on the southern city of Rafah this month, forcing hundreds
of thousands of Palestinians to flee a city that had become a refuge to around
half of the population’s 2.3 million people.
Rafah, on
Gaza’s southern edge, has also been the main route in for aid, and
international organisations say the Israeli operation has cut off Gaza and
raised the risk of famine.
South
Africa’s lawyers asked the ICJ last week to impose emergency measures, saying
Israel’s attacks on Rafah must be stopped to ensure the survival of the
Palestinian people.
The court
is the highest UN body for hearing disputes between states. Its rulings are
final and binding but have been ignored in the past, reports Reuters. The court
has no enforcement powers.
South
Africa’s wider case at the ICJ accuses Israel of orchestrating a state-led
genocide against the Palestinian people. The ICJ has not ruled on the substance
of that accusation – it could take years – but has rejected Israel’s demand to
throw the case out.
In previous
rulings, the court ordered Israel to prevent acts of genocide against the
Palestinians and allow aid to flow into Gaza, while stopping short of ordering
a halt to Israeli military operations.
The U.N. court ruling adds to the international
pressure on Israel over its conduct in the war.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/24/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah
The
International Court of Justice on Friday ruled that Israel must immediately
halt its ground assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, dealing another
blow to the country as it faces increasing international isolation.
The court
has no means of enforcing its orders, and hard-line politicians in Israel
immediately vowed that Israel would not comply. But the ruling puts more
pressure on the Netanyahu government over the conduct of the war. Gazan
authorities say at least 35,000 people have been killed, without distinguishing
between combatants and civilians, and hundreds of thousands have been forced to
flee repeatedly to avoid the Israeli bombardment, which has devastated most of
the enclave.
“The court
considers that in conformity with obligations under the Genocide Convention,
Israel must immediately halt its military offensive and any other action in the
Rafah governorate which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions
of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,”
the court’s president, Nawaf Salam, said in reading the ruling.
The ruling
was the latest in a series of rebukes of Israel over the conduct of its war
against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
In the last
week, the chief prosecutor for a separate court, the International Criminal
Court, announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for Israel’s prime
minister and defense minister on charges of crimes against humanity, alongside
three leaders of Hamas; three European countries announced that they would
recognize a Palestinian state; and Israel backed down on seizing equipment from
The Associated Press after an international backlash.
A South
African legal team had urged the I.C.J., the United Nations’ top court, last
week to put further constraints on Israel’s incursion there, saying it was “the
last step in the destruction of Gaza and its people.”
Israel has
said that its operation in Rafah, from which more than 800,000 people have fled
since the incursion began two weeks ago, is a precise operation to target
Hamas. The country’s military said on Thursday that it was fighting in
neighborhoods near the heart of the city, where half of the territory’s
population had been sheltering before the Israeli military ordered mass
evacuations there.
Israel’s
deputy attorney general for international law, Gilad Noam, and other Israeli
lawyers rejected the claims before the court last Friday, calling South
Africa’s case an “inversion of reality.” He called Israel’s incursion into
Rafah a “limited and localized” operation prefaced with evacuations. Another
Israeli legal adviser, Tamar Kaplan Tourgeman, said that hundreds of trucks
carrying humanitarian supplies had entered Kerem Shalom last week.
Israel’s
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not immediately comment on the
decision. Mr. Netanyahu would shortly hold an emergency consultation with other
top government officials to discuss how to move forward, his office said in a
statement.
Some of his
right-wing allies were quick both to denounce the move and that Israel would
not comply. Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right Israeli national security minister,
said Israel ought to fully discard the judges’ order. “There ought to be one
response: the conquest of Rafah, the escalation of military pressure, and the
utter shattering of Hamas until the achievement of total victory,” he said in a
statement.
The South
African team had also argued that Israel’s control over the two major border
crossings in southern Gaza, at Rafah and Kerem Shalom, was preventing enough
aid from getting in, plunging Gaza into “unprecedented levels of humanitarian
need.” Few aid trucks are entering, according to U.N. data, but dozens of
commercial trucks — which carry goods to sell rather than to distribute freely
— have entered the enclave from the Kerem Shalom crossing.
The
hearings are part of South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide, which it
filed in December. In late January, the court ordered Israel to do more to
prevent acts of genocide, but it stopped short of calling for a cease-fire. The
main case, dealing with the accusation of genocide, is not expected to start
until next year. Israel has denied claims that it is committing genocide.
In March,
in its strongest language to that point, the court ordered Israel to stop
obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza as severe hunger there spreads, calling
for Israel to increase the number of land crossings for supplies and provide
its “full cooperation” with the United Nations.
Judge Salam
said that the situation in Gaza had deteriorated since March, and was now “to
be characterized as disastrous.”
The court
emphasized the need for “the unhindered provision at scale by all concerned of
urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance,” including
maintaining open land crossings and in particular, the Rafah crossing, which
Israel has seized for more than two weeks. It also requested Israel to submit a
report to the court on all measures taken to address this point within one
month.
Israel
launched its military operation in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attacks that
officials say killed 1,200 people and led to the abduction of about 250 others
into Gaza.
— Gaya Gupta
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