OAN’s Brooke Mallory
11:52 AM – Friday, May 24, 2024
Israel’s Rafah offensive “must be halted,” according to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
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South Africa, which filed a genocide lawsuit against Israel in the UN’s top court, asked for more emergency measures, and as a result, the court issued a temporary ruling directing Israel to cease its offensive in Rafah.
As he read the court’s decision, Nawaf Salam, president of the ICJ, stated that the requirements for a new emergency order had been satisfied and that the interim measures the court had issued in March did not adequately address the current state of affairs in Gaza.
The ICJ has no authority to implement the order, so Israel is unlikely to follow it, but the historic decision will put more pressure on the growingly isolated American ally.
Israel has made it clear that it will not abide by a judicial decision to stop fighting Hamas terrorists, understandably. Shortly after the decision was rendered, an Israeli official told NBC News that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting with legal counsel to discuss the matter further.
“We have a national and moral duty to do everything we can to return our abducted,” Netanyahu said.
Leader of the Israeli opposition, Yair Lapid, also blasted the judgment, claiming that the court failed to draw a link between the violence in Rafah and the release of Israeli hostages.
While the ICJ did not impose the cease-fire that Palestinians and humanitarian organizations had hoped for, it did require Israel to take all necessary precautions to prevent what it called “acts of genocide” in Gaza in a verdict from January.
However, the ruling did not meet Israel’s own requests for the case to be dismissed and dealt a severe setback to its attempts to defend its war efforts in Gaza as both legitimate and required to destroy Hamas in accordance with international law.
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