This is the first time the ICJ has issued a ruling that compels Israel to significantly change its military operation in Gaza.
The international panel of judges said that Israel had not convinced them that the evacuation efforts and related measures that Israel affirms to have undertaken to enhance the security of civilians in the Gaza Strip, and in particular those recently displaced from from Rafah, are sufficient to alleviate the immense risk to which the Palestinian population is exposed as a result of the military offensive in Rafah.
The case was brought by South Africa under the genocide convention, created 1948 after the Holocaust to give legal foundation to the words never again.
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Judges at the top United Nations court ordered Israel to halt its offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah and withdraw from the enclave, in a case brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide, citing “immense risk” to the Palestinian population.
ReplyDeleteFriday’s decision marked the third time this year the 15-judge panel has issued preliminary orders seeking to rein in the death toll and alleviate humanitarian suffering in Gaza. While orders are legally binding, the court has no police to enforce them.
Reading out a ruling by the International Court of Justice 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 the besieged Palestinian enclave now, and conditions had been met for a new emergency order.
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,” Salam said, and called the humanitarian situation in Rafah “disastrous”.
We're getting some reaction now from South Africa, which has welcomed today's ruling.
ReplyDeleteAs a reminder, South Africa had asked the ICJ to order Israel to halt its offensive in Rafah as an emergency measure, saying its actions in southern Gaza amount to a “genocidal” operation and threaten the survival of the Palestinian people.
"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, AFP reports.
The ICJ ordered Israel to report to the court within one month on its progress in applying the measures ordered today.
ReplyDeleteAs a reminder, while ICJ rulings are legally binding, in practice they are unenforceable by the court.