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The UN’s top court has ordered Israel to “immediately halt” its military offensive in Rafah, the southern Gazan city to which more than 1mn Palestinians had fled fighting elsewhere in the enclave.
In an order issued in response to an urgent request brought by South Africa, the International Court of Justice said on Friday that conditions in Rafah were “disastrous” and that the situation had deteriorated sufficiently to issue new orders in the case.
The court said that “in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in the Rafah governorate” 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 would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
South Africa’s request is part of a claim it brought last year alleging that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has vehemently denied the charges, and the ICJ is unlikely to issue a final decision in the case for years.
But the court has already twice issued interim orders in the case. In January, it told Israel to comply with international law on genocide, and in March, to ensure more food and humanitarian assistance reached Palestinians in Gaza, warning that famine was “setting in”.
Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said that Israel would not agree to stop the war in Gaza. “Those who demand that the State of Israel stop the war, demand that it decree itself to cease to exist,” he wrote on the social media platform X. “If we lay down our weapons, the enemy will reach the beds of our children and women throughout the country.”
The ICJ has no way of enforcing its orders — Russia continues to flout the court’s 2022 order to suspend its military operations in Ukraine. But the decision adds to the intense international pressure on Israel over its war in Gaza, which has fuelled a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave.
Separately on Monday the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — which deals with crimes by individuals rather than states — sought arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders, saying he had “reasonable grounds to believe” they were responsible for alleged war crimes.
Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will continue its offensive in Gaza regardless of international criticism, dismissing the ICC prosecutor’s move as “a distortion of reality”.
Gallant on Thursday said Israel was stepping up its assault on Rafah, the southern Gazan city that it regards as Hamas’s last major stronghold. It has said more than 1mn civilians who had been sheltering there had left since Israel began an operation in the city this month.
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