Top U.N. court orders Israel to end Rafah operation
The International Court of Justice on Friday ruled that Israel must immediately halt its ground assault on the city of Rafah, dealing another blow to the country as it faces increasing international isolation.
While the court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, has no means of enforcing its orders, the ruling adds to the condemnation that Israel has faced over the war, in which health authorities in the enclave say that more than 35,000 people have died there.
A South African legal team urged the United Nations’ top court last week to put further constraints on Israel’s incursion there, saying the military operation was “the last step in the destruction of Gaza and its people.”
Israel has said its activity in Rafah is a precise operation to target Hamas. The country’s military said Thursday that it was fighting in neighborhoods near the heart of the city, where half of the territory’s population had been sheltering before the Israeli military ordered mass evacuations there.
The South African team also argued that Israel’s control over the two major border crossings in southern Gaza, at Rafah and Kerem Shalom, was preventing enough aid from getting in, plunging Gaza into “unprecedented levels of humanitarian need.”
Israel’s deputy attorney general for international law, Gilad Noam, and other Israeli lawyers rejected the claims before the court on May 17, calling South Africa’s case an “inversion of reality.”
He called Israel’s incursion into Rafah a “limited and localized” operation prefaced with evacuations. Another Israeli legal adviser, Tamar Kaplan Tourgeman, said that hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian supplies had entered Kerem Shalom last week.
Few aid trucks are entering, according to U.N. data, but dozens of commercial trucks — which carry goods to sell rather than to distribute freely — have entered the enclave from the Kerem Shalom crossing.
The hearings are part of South Africa’s case accusing Israel of genocide, which it filed in December. In late January, the court ordered Israel to do more to prevent acts of genocide, but it stopped short of calling for a cease-fire. The main case, dealing with the accusation of genocide, is not expected to start until next year. Israel has denied the claim.