Venu Menon
Wellington, May 26,2024
The ruling by a multinational panel of judges, which includes a judge from India, of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ highest court, calling for a halt to Israel’s military operations in Rafah in southern Gaza, where over a million Palestinians are sheltering, has deepened the Jewish state’s isolation within the international community.
The court, based at The Hague in the Netherlands, also ordered the border crossing with Egypt to be opened to allow the flow of humanitarian aid.
The ruling is legally binding, but the ICJ lacks the mechanism to enforce it, relying rather on the compliance of states and on international pressure.
Predictably, Israel has rejected the ICJ’s latest interim ruling, handed down on Friday, May 24, and vowed to press on with its military goals in Rafah, which it identifies as a Hamas stronghold, saying civilians will be evacuated from Rafah before a full-scale offensive is launched. A member of the Likud Party, which is part of the governing coalition of Israel, said “Israel is obliged to protect itself and to eliminate Hamas.”
The court ruling is in the nature of a follow-up injunction in the case brought by South Africa in January under the Genocide Convention, created in 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust.
But Friday’s ruling is not a decision on the merits of South Africa’s original application accusing Israel of committing genocidal acts against Palestinians in Gaza. That case is ongoing.
Though the court urged Hamas to release the hostages immediately and unconditionally, its real focus is to protect the Palestinians taking refuge in Rafah from physical destruction, “in whole or in part.”
In the leadup to the ruling, Rafah has come under aerial bombardment and artillery fire by Israel as a prelude to its final takeover.
The ICJ’s ruling is noteworthy for its elevated tone of alarm:
“In addition, the Court is not convinced 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 the Rafah Governorate, are sufficient to alleviate the immense risk to which the Palestinian population is exposed as a result of the military offensive in Rafah”.
Its sway over international sentiment is foreseeable. The ruling, chastising Israel’s military push into Rafah, will further galvanise sentiment across parts of Europe in favour of Palestinian statehood, with Ireland, Norway and Spain having already declared their support for Palestinian self-determination.
This puts pressure on other European countries to follow suit.
But Israel views statehood for Palestine as a counterproductive move that “rewards terrorism” and encourages Hamas, further diminishing the scope of a negotiated settlement.
But the genie is out of the bottle. On May 10, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of granting Palestine a seat, but without the right to vote. Full membership for Palestine is a decision left to the UN Security Council, where the United States, Israel’s staunch ally, will veto the move.
However, Washington is opposed to Israel’s military occupation of Rafah without a plan for its aftermath. There is also acute unease over the civilian death toll that will follow a ground invasion of Rafah.
The Hamas-run health ministry puts the Palestinian toll in Gaza at 35,000, since hostilities broke out in the enclave following a deadly incursion by Hamas into Israel on October 7 that claimed over 1,200 lives.
Judge Dalveer Bhandari of India, who was among the 13 judges on the ICJ panel that voted in favour of the current ruling (with two voting against), had noted in his filing before the court in January that it [the ICJ] “must, in this case, take into account the widespread destruction in Gaza and loss of life that the population of Gaza has thus far endured.”
Judge Bhandari also called for an “immediate halt” to the “fighting and hostilities,” and urged Hamas in particular to ensure that the remaining hostages “captured on 7 October 2023 are unconditionally released forthwith.”
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court (ICC), an independent judicial forum also based at The Hague, has queered the pitch by entertaining an application from its prosecutor requesting that arrest warrants be issued against Israeli and Hamas leaders for war crimes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the move a “moral outrage of monstrous proportions.”
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
