Israel strikes Rafah after top UN court orders it to halt offensive

 

Guardian:

Israel strikes Rafah after top UN court orders it to halt offensive

Israel bombed the Gaza Strip, including Rafah, on Saturday, despite an order from the UN’s top court for it to “immediately halt” its military offensive in the southern city, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The Hague-based ICJ, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, also instructed Israel to keep open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which Israel closed before sending troops and tanks into the besieged city and crossing earlier this month.

Israel gave no indication it was preparing to change course in Rafah, insisting the court had got it wrong.

In spite of the ICJ ruling, Israel carried out strikes on the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning as fighting raged between the army and Hamas’s armed wing, reports AFP.

Palestinian witnesses and AFP teams reported Israeli strikes in Rafah and the central city of Deir al-Balah.

“We hope that the court’s decision will put pressure on Israel to end this war of extermination because there is nothing left here,” Oum Mohammad al-Ashqa, a Palestinian woman from Gaza City displaced to Deir al-Balah by the war, told AFP.

Mohammed Saleh, also interviewed by AFP in the central Gazan city, said, “Israel is a state that considers itself above the law. Therefore, I do not believe that the shooting or the war will stop other than by force.”

In its ruling, the ICJ said Israel must “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 could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”.

It ordered Israel to allow UN-mandated investigators “unimpeded access” to Gaza to look into the genocide allegations.