By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
THE HAGUE/JERUSALEM/GAZA (Worthy News) – Israel attacked suspected Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip, including Rafah, on Saturday, a day after the top United Nations court ordered it to halt military operations in the southern city.
The court, known as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), stressed in the same ruling that Israel should reopen the border crossing at Rafah between Egypt and Gaza for humanitarian aid.
Israel has already said it won’t halt its military operations as it seeks to destroy the ”terrorist organization Hamas,” including its last four battalions that are believed to be in Rafah.
The ICJ’s ruling was an interim judgment in a case brought against Israel by South Africa, which accuses the Jewish nation of “genocide,” charges the Israeli government vehemently denies.
In its keenly awaited 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.”
ICJ orders are legally binding but Israel is not a member of the court. Israel disputes the ICC’s jurisdiction, saying Palestine is “not a sovereign state” capable of being a party to the court’s founding Rome Statute.
In addition, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned ICC war crimes allegations and investigation against his government as “antisemitic.”
SENDING SIGNAL
Observers, therefore, saw Saturday’s strikes by Israel in Gaza as Israel’s signal that it won’t accept the rulings by the far away ICJ, which is based in The Hague, Netherlands.
The latest attacks came as efforts were underway in Paris to seek a cease-fire in the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel in which some 1,200 mainly Jewish people were killed.
Hamas fighters also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the Israeli army says are dead.
The ICJ also ordered the “immediate release” of all hostages still held by Hamas and its Palestinian allies, hours after the Israeli military announced troops had recovered the bodies of three more of the captives from northern Gaza.
Israel had urged the international community to support its efforts to free hostages and destroy Hamas in the process.
The government on Saturday gave no indication it was preparing to change course in Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians sought shelter because of the war.
However, it insisted that the ICC had it wrong as the operations were aimed at Hamas but not innocent Palestinian civilians, as critics suggest.
LIVING CONDITIONS
“Israel has not and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area that create living conditions that could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,” National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a joint statement with Israel’s foreign ministry spokesperson.
Yet Palestinian witnesses said there were Israeli strikes in Rafah and the central city of Deir al-Balah, attacks Israel insists are aimed at Hamas fighters.
“We hope that the court’s decision will put pressure on Israel to end this war of extermination because there is nothing left here,” added Oum Mohammad Al-Ashqa, a Palestinian woman from Gaza City.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that while he regrets every human life lost, there is no genocide in Gaza.
The Hamas-run health ministry claims more than 35,800 Palestinians have died since Israel launched its assault in Gaza, an overcrowded enclave of more than 2.3 million people.
Netanyahu says roughly 30,000 Palestinians were killed, including at least 14,000 Hamas fighters.
Hamas also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the Israeli army says are dead.
BODIES RECOVERED
The Israeli military said three hostages whose bodies were recovered in north Gaza on Friday — Israeli hostage Chanan Yablonka, Brazilian-Israeli Michel Nisenbaum, and French-Mexican Orion Hernandez Radoux — were “murdered” during the October 7 attack and their bodies taken to Gaza.
The ICJ ruled, and attacks came ahead of separate meetings on the Gaza conflict in Paris between the chief of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israeli representatives on one side and French President Emmanuel Macron and foreign ministers of four key Arab states on the other.
Cease-fire talks involving U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari mediators ended shortly after Israel launched the Rafah operation.
However, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office this week said the war cabinet asked the Israeli delegation “to continue negotiations for the return of the hostages.”
CIA chief Bill Burns was due to meet Israeli representatives in Paris in a bid to relaunch negotiations.
Separately, French President Emmanuel Macron reportedly received the prime minister of Qatar and the Saudi, Egyptian, and Jordanian foreign ministers on Friday “to press for a cease-fire.”
The French presidency said they held talks on the Gaza war and ways to set up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
NEW EFFORTS
The five countries discussed “the effective implementation of the two-state solution,” it added.
Top U.S. diplomat Antony Blinken also spoke with Israeli war Cabinet minister Benny Gantz about new efforts to achieve a cease-fire and reopen the Rafah border crossing as soon as possible, Washington said.
Israeli ground troops started moving into Rafah in early May, defying global opposition, saying it was vital in the battle against Hamas.
Troops took over the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which critics say slowed deliveries of aid for Gaza’s population.
Israel says there is enough aid, but much of it is stolen or halted by Hamas and its allies.
On Friday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed in a call with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden to allow U.N. aid through another entry point into southern Gaza, the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel, the White House said.
The U.S. military has also installed a temporary jetty on the Gaza coast to receive aid by sea, and the U.N. said it had delivered 97 trucks of assistance after “a rocky start” a week ago.
‘END NIGHTMARE’
The security and humanitarian situation in the territory remains alarming, with “a risk of famine,” hospitals out of service, and around 800,000 people, claims the United Nations.
U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said the situation had reached “a moment of clarity.”
“Aid workers and U.N. staff must be able to carry out their jobs in safety,” he posted on social media site X late Friday.
“At a time when the people of Gaza are staring down famine… it is more critical than ever to heed the calls made over the last seven months: Release the hostages. Agree to a cease-fire. End this nightmare.”
Israel counters that the war was triggered by Hamas, which it says is using human civilians as human shields and withholding aid to the population.
“For Israel, every civilian death is a tragedy. For Hamas, it is a strategy,” Netanyahu said in a recent interview.
Copyright 1999-2024 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
A massive barrage of Israeli airstrikes hit Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon just after the terrorist group’s leader declared that two days of intense hybrid bombings, including the detonation of pagers and walkie-talkies targeting Hezbollah forces, amounted to a declaration of war.
Facing relentless violence against their communities by Islamic jihadist terror groups, 16.2 million Christians in sub-Saharan Africa have now been forced to flee their homes and live in poverty-stricken Internally Displaced People (IDP) camps, the Christian Post (CP) reports.
A Pakistani court has sentenced Shagufta Kiran, a Christian mother of four, to death for “committing blasphemy against Islam,” a senior Christian advocacy activist told Worthy News Thursday.
Amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has reiterated that the kingdom would not recognize Israel without the establishment of a Palestinian state, the Times of Israel reports. The Crown Prince made his remarks during an annual speech to the advisory Shura Council on Wednesday (September 18).
Taiwanese company Gold Apollo says that the pager model allegedly used by Hezbollah members that simultaneously exploded and killed numerous people, mainly in Lebanon, was made by its Hungarian partner.
Israel has condemned an adopted United Nations resolution demanding that all Israeli forces and civilians pull out of Palestinian areas within a year. The resolution also called for an embargo on arms that Israel might use in those areas.
Israel’s atomic chief has warned that Syria built an undeclared nuclear facility after Iran, which he said has “in alarming amounts conducting covert nuclear activities.”