The UN High-Order Security Court Orders Israel to End Its Offensive in Rafah and the Interaction Between Israel and the Security Council
BERLIN and TEL AVIV — The United Nations’ highest court ordered Israel Friday to halt its offensive in Rafah, citing “immense risk” to the population of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have sought refuge in the southern Gaza city. The court refused to call for an end to the offensive in the Gaza Strip.
Friday’s ruling was related to one of several provisional measures that South Africa has added to a broader case it filed with the ICJ in December against Israel, accusing it of committing acts of genocide in Gaza. The court has not yet ruled on that case and it could take months or years to do so.
“Israel has not carried out and will not carry out military activity in the Rafah area that creates living conditions that could lead to the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,” the Israeli government statement said.
Since the beginning of Israel’s offensive, around 900,000 Palestinians have left the area. Before Israel’s current military offensive, an estimated 1.3 million Palestinians displaced from elsewhere in Gaza were sheltering there.
One concern among Israel’s leadership is that an injunction from the ICJ could precipitate a similar resolution by the U.N. Security Council, where Israel would rely on the United States to veto such a measure.
This week also saw the International Criminal Court, a separate entity from the ICJ, submit requests from prosecutor Karim Khan to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, and Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas’ military wing, the Al Qassem Brigades.
Rob and Daniel reported from Berlin and Tel Aviv, respectively. Anas Baba contributed to this story in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip. The Hague received contributions from Abu Bakr Bashir. Al-Shalchi made a contribution in Tel Aviv.
That possibility was echoed after the court ruling by Josep Borrell, the top diplomat for the European Union, who asked what position the EU would now take toward Israel. He stated that we would have to decide between support to international institutions of the rule of law or support to Israel.
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In protest, Egypt has halted shipments of aid through its border with Gaza. The U.N. stopped distributing food in Rafah on May 21 due to lack of supplies and reported a surge in diseases from the mass displacement due to a lack of basic supplies.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the court in the Netherlands were disappointed because the judges stopped short of calling for a total end to Israel’s offensive in Gaza.
“Netanyahu will not respect anyone,” said Abu Issa, who is sheltering in the ruins of a damaged school in the decimated city of Khan Younis. He doesn’t respect decisions of the court. Netanyahu doesn’t care about anyone, and the decisions are meaningless.
The court decision was hailed by the head of the Palestinian government in the West Bank, President Abbas. But Mahmoud Abu Issa, a Rafah resident who fled the Israeli incursion in May, said he doubted Israel would abide by it.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid, a centrist, called the court’s decision a “moral disaster” by not ordering the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas since its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, which sparked the ongoing war.
An hour after the court ruling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a phone meeting to consult Israel’s top legal official and senior government ministers and officials, Netanyahu’s office said.
Minutes before the court announced its ruling, Palestinians in Rafah reported one of the most intensive Israeli bombardments there since troops entered the western part of the city in early May. Palestinian journalists said about a dozen Israeli airstrikes on a main road cut off access to a hospital in the city that had mostly been evacuated, but still had a medical team inside. There was no immediate response from the Israeli military.
The International Court of Justice president said in his ruling that the interim measures ordered by the court haven’t adequately addressed the situation in Gaza and that conditions in Rafah have worsened.
Salam cited a report by the United Nations International Children’s Fund that estimated about half of 1.2 million Palestinians sheltering in Rafah were children, and he warned that “military operations there would result in, I quote, the few remaining basic services and infrastructure they need to survive being totally destroyed.”
Yuval Shany, an international law expert at the Hebrew University and senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, says the court’s ruling left enough ambiguity to allow Israel to continue its offensive there.
The 15-judge panel has ordered the death toll to be reined in and to create pathways for more aid in Gaza three times this year.