The UN’s top court has ordered Israel to halt its assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah in a ruling that will ratchet up the pressure on the increasingly isolated country.
The president of the international court of justice, Nawaf Salam, said the humanitarian situation in Rafah had deteriorated further and was now classified as “disastrous”, meaning the ICJ’s previously issued provisional measures were insufficient.
He said the court had voted by a majority of 13 votes to two that “Israel shall, in conformity with its obligations under the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in Rafah governorate … 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 would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.
The order by the ICJ is not enforceable, and Israeli ministers indicated that they would not comply with it.
Friday’s ruling by the ICJ is the court’s third – and by far the most significant – intervention in the conflict and comes four days after the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, a separate court also based in The Hague, said he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Hamas and Israeli officials for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant.
The ruling will increase pressure on the UK and the US, which criticised the ICC warrants request, to bring their influence to bear on Israel.
