Editorial Comment:
What should happen next is that the UNSC immediately convene to enforce the decision. Should anyone obstruct enforcement through abuse of veto, the Uniting for Peace resolution must be invoked, referring the matter to the UNGA. Israel should be expelled from the United Nations and subjected to comprehensive sanctions that isolate the pariah state. Not only must the crime of genocide be appropriately addressed, but also apartheid.
A.V.
The now two-week Israeli offensive has killed hundreds of Palestinians, displaced hundreds of thousands more, and cut off aid from Egypt
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel on 24 May to halt its military offensive in Rafah as part of the ongoing genocide case filed by South Africa earlier this year.
The top UN court said that the current situation entails further risks of “irreparable damage” to the rights of Palestinians in Gaza and that conditions have been met for new emergency measures.
BREAKING: INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE (ICJ) ORDER ISRAEL IMMEDIATELY STOP MILITARY OFFENSIVE IN RAFAH pic.twitter.com/KH4o5dVW7U
— Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman) May 24, 2024
“[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,” ICJ President Nawaf Salam said.
He also ordered Tel Aviv to “maintain open the Rafah crossing for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance” and to “take effective measures to ensure the unimpeded access to the Gaza Strip of any commission of inquiry, fact-finding mission or other investigative body mandated by competent organs of the United Nations to investigate allegations of genocide.”
Moreover, the World Court ordered Israeli officials to “submit a report to the Court on all measures taken to give effect to this Order, within one month as from the date of this Order.”
Following the ICJ session, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Netanyahu will convene an emergency meeting later today, which will include Foreign Minister Israel Katz, war cabinet minister and opposition leader Benny Gantz, and the government’s judicial advisor.
Hamas also commented on the ruling, highlighting that Tel Aviv continues to commit “massacres” across the Gaza Strip and urged the court to issue an order for Israel to stop all its operations in the besieged enclave, not just in Rafah.
“What is happening in Jabalia and other governorates of the Strip is no less criminal and dangerous than what is happening in Rafah,” the Hamas statement reads.
“We call on the international community and the United Nations to pressure the occupation to immediately comply with this decision and to seriously and genuinely proceed in translating all UN resolutions that force the zionist occupation army to stop the genocide it has been committing against our people for more than seven months.”
For its part, South Africa welcomed Friday’s ruling and urged UN member states to back it.
“I believe it’s a much stronger, in terms of wording, set of provisional measures, very clear call for a cessation,” Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told public broadcaster SABC.
The ruling comes as Israel’s now two-week bombing and ground offensive in Rafah has killed at least 171 people and displaced around one million Palestinians. Most had already been displaced by Israeli bombing and now face a further lack of shelter, food, water, and medicine.
South Africa made an urgent request in February for the court to consider whether Israel’s decision to launch an operation in Rafah “requires that the court uses its power to prevent further imminent breach of the rights of Palestinians in Gaza.”
The country had filed its case at the end of December, declaring that Israel was breaching obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in its military campaign in Gaza.
On 26 January, the ICJ ordered that Israel take steps to prevent acts of genocide by its military in Gaza and punish incitements to genocide.
The court, however, stopped short of ordering a ceasefire. South Africa had been aiming for an ICJ order of an emergency halt to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Any decision of the sort would need backing from the UN Security Council.
On 16 May, the ICJ held hearings to consider South Africa’s request for additional emergency measures to halt Israel’s ongoing operation in Rafah, resulting in Friday’s ruling.
Israel’s war on Gaza has killed over 35,000 Palestinians while razing much of the besieged enclave, including entire neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, mosques, churches, farmland, and cemeteries.
Israel politicians and activists have repeatedly publicized their intent to destroy and ethnically cleanse Gaza to make way for future Jewish settlement.
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