Arab states slam Israel
UN HEARINGS: OCCUPATION ‘AFFRONT TO INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE’
➽ Most speakers demand country withdraws.
The League of Arab States yesterday called Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories an “affront to international justice”, saying failure to end it amounted to “genocide”.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) entered its last day of week-long hearings after a request from the United Nations (UN), with an unprecedented 52 countries giving their views on Israel’s occupation.
“This prolonged occupation is an affront to international justice,” the 22 Arab-country bloc’s representative told judges in The Hague.
“The failure to bring it to an end has led to the current horrors perpetrated against the Palestinian people, amounting to genocide,” Abdel Hakim El-Rifai said.
Most speakers during the hearings have demanded Israel end its occupation, which came after a six-day Arab-Israeli war in 1967.
But last week, the United States said Israel should not be legally obliged to withdraw without taking its “very real security needs” into account.
Speakers yesterday warned a prolonged occupation posed an “extreme danger” to stability in the Middle East and beyond.
“If left unchecked, it runs the risk of not only threatening regional, but also global peace and security,” Türkiye’s representative Ahmet Yildiz said.
The UN has asked the ICJ to hand down an “advisory opinion” on the “legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”.
The court will probably deliver its opinion before the end of the year, but it is not binding.
Israel is not taking part in the oral hearings. It submitted a written contribution, in which it described the questions the court had been asked as “prejudicial” and “tendentious”.
The hearings began a week ago with three hours of testimony from Palestinian officials, who accused the Israeli occupiers of running a system of “colonialism and apartheid”.
The hearing before the court is separate from a case brought by South Africa against Israel for alleged genocide during its current offensive in Gaza.
In that case, the ICJ ruled that Israel should do everything in its power to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza and allow in humanitarian aid. The war in Gaza began after Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on 7 October, which resulted in the deaths of about 1 160 people, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israeli’s retaliation has so far killed at least 29 782 people, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. –
Afull-scale Israeli military operation in Rafah would deliver a death blow to aid programmes in Gaza, where humanitarian assistance remains “completely insufficient”, warned the United Nations (UN) chief yesterday.
Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Antonio Guterres said Gaza’s southernmost city, where more than 1.4 million Palestinians are crowded together in tent cities, was “the core of the humanitarian aid operation” in the Palestinian territory.
“An all-out Israeli offensive on the city would not only be terrifying for more than a million Palestinian civilians sheltering there; it would put the final nail in the coffin of our aid programmes,” he said.
His comments came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated his country was intent on a ground invasion in Rafah, in its bid for “total victory” over Hamas, whose 7 October attack triggered the war.
He said once a ground invasion happens, victory would be just “weeks away”, and that a potential ceasefire, being discussed in Doha, would only delay the operation.
The war broke out after Hamas’ unprecedented 7 October attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1 160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official figures.
Hamas militants also took about 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including 31 presumed dead, according to Israel.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least
29 692 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Guterres stressed that “nothing can justify Hamas’ deliberate killing, injuring, torturing and kidnapping of civilians, the use of sexual violence – or the indiscriminate launching of rockets towards Israel”.
“And nothing justifies the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Guterres lamented that despite his urgent calls for the UN Security Council to take all measures to “end the bloodshed in Gaza and prevent escalation”, it had failed to act.
As one of five permanent members of the 15-member council, the United States – Israel’s biggest ally – has a veto that it has wielded three times so far to bar the body from calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
Guterres warned of the consequences of the council’s lack of action on Gaza and its failure, due to a Russian veto, to act on the war in Ukraine.
This inaction “has severely – perhaps fatally – undermined its authority”, he cautioned.
“The council needs serious reform to its composition and working methods.”
Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh yesterday announced the resignation of his government, which rules parts of the occupied West Bank, saying “new political measures” were needed, given the changing reality in Gaza. –
Inaction has undermined Security Council’s authority