Egypt to back genocide case brought against Israel at world court

CAIRO

Egypt announced on Sunday that it would back South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in a sign of Cairo’s frustration over an Israeli military operation in Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, which borders Egypt.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the step was taken “in view of aggravating intensity and scale” of Israeli attacks against civilians in Gaza and the “continued perpetration of systematic practices” against Palestinians, including direct targeting of civilians and destruction of infrastructure.

It was an “unprecedented humanitarian crisis,” it added.

At the end of December, South Africa took Israel to the ICJ for alleged violations of the Genocide Convention during the Gaza War. In an interim ruling, the U.N. court ordered Israel to take protective measures to prevent genocide.

Israel has repeatedly rejected accusations of genocide and argues that it invoked the right to selfdefense after militants from Hamas and other extremist Palestinian organizations killed hundreds of civilians in Israel on Oct. 7.

Egypt in 1979 became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but the military campaign in Gaza has inflamed anti-Israeli sentiment in the Arab world’s most populous nation.

Earlier in the week,

Israel took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, an operation that has halted humanitarian aid deliveries via the vital facility into the heavily populated Gaza Strip.

Cairo is also concerned that a major Israeli incursion in Rafah, which is crowded with refugees who fled the fighting in the northern areas of Gaza, would trigger an exodus into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

Israel says Rafah is the last stronghold of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

Egypt’s state-affiliated TV station al-Qahera

News, citing a high-level source, reported that Cairo has refused to coordinate with Israel on aid entry into Gaza through the Rafah crossing because of the “unacceptable Israeli escalation.”