Apocalyptic conditions ‘will worsen’

• Pretoria presents its case in The Hague amid Israel’s latest military offensive in Rafah

Israel’s latest military offence into Rafah is the “last step in the destruction of [all] Gaza” and the only order that can save Palestinians is a ceasefire, SA has told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. SA made oral arguments at the court on Thursday in its case against Israel over alleged contraventions of the Genocide Convention. This is the second time SA has appeared in the court against Israel after obtaining preliminary orders in January that Israel scale down its operations in Gaza.

Israel’s latest military offence into Rafah is the “last step in the destruction of [all] Gaza” and the only order that can save Palestinians is a ceasefire, SA has told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

SA made oral arguments at the court on Thursday in its case against Israel over alleged contraventions of the Genocide Convention. This is the second time SA has appeared in the court against Israel after obtaining preliminary orders in January that Israel scale down its operations in Gaza.

SA filed an urgent application to the ICJ last week after the latest offensive into Rafah, which SA described as the “last refuge” for all Palestinian people.

The case started after an attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7 2023. A reported 1,200 Israelis were killed and 240 kidnapped. Israel responded with an assault on Gaza, killing more than 30,000 people by March, according to Palestinian health officials.

Israel maintains it is “making every effort to limit harm to the noninvolved”. SA says Israel violated the Genocide Convention to which both countries are signatories.

In January, the majority of the ICJ found SA’s claims “plausible” that the Palestinian people’s rights under the Genocide Convention are under “imminent” threat. The court ordered Israel to take measures to limit violence and allow for humanitarian aid. Since January, SA has repeatedly obtained further orders from the ICJ but Israel has ignored these, it argues.

LAST CENTRE

Israel’s latest military offensive into Rafah prompted SA to urgently request the court’s intervention again. “Rafah is the last population centre in Gaza that has not been substantially destroyed by Israel,” SA said in court papers.

In his opening address, SA’s ambassador to the Netherlands, Vusimuzi Madonsela, told the court Israel was escalating its attacks and its alleged “genocide has continued apace and has just reached a new and horrific stage”.

Vaughan Lowe, an expert in international law, said the Rafah operations are “part of the end game” in which “Gaza is utterly destroyed”. Lowe dismissed Israel’s claim that it has the right to self-defence. Self-defence “does not give a state licence to use unlimited violence,” he said, adding “nothing can ever justify genocide”.

Israel, as an “occupying state”, has — under the authority of the ICJ’s previous judgments

— “no right to self-defence” against the state it is occupying, Lowe said.

John Dugard, a senior advocate and renowned expert in international law, pointed out that “new facts” allow the court to issue new orders or amend its previous orders. “A ceasefire is needed for the sake of humanity,” he said. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians were crammed into small areas, after being ordered by Israel to flee, and yet the country still targeted those areas.

FOOD SUPPLIES

Advocate Max du Plessis argued that Israel’s “sealing off entry and exit” at the last crossings in Rafah led to disruption of aid to Palestinians. With attacks on hospitals, aid vehicles and even children, it leads to “only one inference ... [and that is] genocidal intent”.

The UN recently reported that no supplies were getting into Gaza, a direct defiance by Israel of the court’s earlier orders to allow such unhindered aid, Du Plessis said.

Advocate Adila Hassim noted that the numbers of dead “defy ... comprehension”, with a possible 35,000 people killed and 10,000 more missing. “The majority are women and children,” she said. “These apocalyptic conditions are set to worsen.”

She pointed to attacks on hospitals and the discovery of mass graves with the bodies of elderly and children. Many were handcuffed, she said.

SA therefore seeks the “only order” that will protect Palestinians, which is an “explicit order that Israel cease its military activity ... throughout Gaza”.

Senior Irish advocate Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh said “the court has the power to [take action] and our shared humanity compels it”.

The court’s reluctance to previously order a ceasefire had “cynically been used by Israel”. Due to the new facts SA had presented, the court should order Israel to cease its operations to allow its previous orders to take effect.

Ní Ghrálaigh said Palestinians were “enduring this horror” months after the court’s previous orders and “are crying out ... enough is enough”. Israel will present its arguments on Friday.

Israel’s tanks pushed into the heart of Jabalia in northern Gaza on Thursday, facing antitank rockets and mortar bombs from militants concentrated there, while in the south, its forces pounded Rafah without advancing, Palestinian residents and militants said.

The slow progress of Israel’s offensive, more than seven months after it was prompted by Hamas’ deadly cross-border raid, highlighted the difficulty of achieving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aim of eradicating the militant group.

Armed wings of Hamas and its ally Islamic Jihad have been able to fight up and down the Gaza Strip, using heavily fortified tunnels to stage attacks in both the north — the focus of Israel’s initial invasion — and new battlegrounds such as Rafah.

“We are wearing Hamas down,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant said, announcing that more troops would be deployed in Rafah, where he said several tunnels had been destroyed.

Israel says four Hamas battalions are now in Rafah along with hostages abducted during the October 7 assault, but faces pressure from the US, Europe and the UN not to invade the city, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinian civilians are sheltering.

The Gaza death toll has risen to 35,272, health officials in the Hamas-run coastal enclave say, and malnutrition is widespread as international aid efforts are blocked by the violence and Israel’s de facto shutdowns of its Kerem Shalom crossing and the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Israel says Hamas is diverting aid and it needs to eliminate the organisation for its own protection after the deaths of 1,200 people on October 7, and to free the 128 hostages still held out of 253 abducted by the militants, according to its tallies.

FLOATING PIER

The US anchored a temporary floating pier to a beach in Gaza on Thursday to boost aid deliveries, but it is still unclear how it will be distributed given the challenges that have beset the UN and relief groups for months.

Egyptian sources say Cairo, which fears a mass exodus from Gaza to Egypt, has rejected an Israeli request to co-ordinate on the reopening of the Rafah border crossing, which Israel seized on May 7, and keep it beyond Palestinian control.

Ceasefire and hostage release talks are deadlocked over how to end the war. Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said his group, which has run Gaza since 2007, should continue to have a role while President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, mediating along with Qatar and the US, said Israel was not doing enough.

Israel declared major operations over in northern Gaza months ago while pledging to return to prevent Hamas regrouping.

On Thursday, around a week after they moved back in, Israeli tanks were heavily bombarding the main market in the heart of Jabalia, a decades-old refugee camp, and several stores there caught fire, residents and Hamas media outlets said.

Earlier, the armed wing of Hamas said its fighters in Jabalia had destroyed an Israeli troop carrier with a locally made Al-Yassin 105 antitank rocket, causing casualties.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify the statement and there was no immediate comment from Israel.

“They are bombing like crazy, destroying the houses and the main market in the camp,” one of the camp’s residents said via a chat app.

“It seems they are acting this way because of the resistance operations that grilled their soldiers,” he said, refusing to give a name for fear of reprisals.

Residents said tanks had also pushed back to near the entrance to the nearby northern city of Beit Hanoun and Israeli bulldozers were demolishing factories and property in the area.

Palestinian medical teams said they were aware of reports of casualties in Jabalia but were unable to reach them because of the intensity of Israeli bombing and the active army incursion.

Among those killed were a Palestinian journalist, Mahmoud Jahjouh, and his family, medics and fellow journalists said.

Israeli says it has eliminated many gunmen in Jabalia but had no new comment on developments there on Thursday.

In Gaza City to the south, medical teams and rescuers said they were continuing the search for casualties in the Zeitoun and Sabra suburbs after dozens of bodies were recovered in the wake of a six-day army raid. Palestinian authorities do not distinguish between militants and civilians when reporting death tolls.

In the southern tip of Gaza, tanks held their positions in eastern neighbourhoods and outskirts of Rafah while keeping up pressure with aerial and ground bombardments.

Medics said one Israeli tank shell had landed in a square deep inside Rafah, killing one Palestinian and wounding several others, while residents said clusters of homes on the edge of the city had been blown up by the army after evacuation orders.

Israel said its strikes were targeted at militants.

“We’re operating in specific places according to our intelligence and where we know Hamas terrorists are hiding, and where we think we can find either tunnel shafts or terror infrastructure or ammunition of many types,” military spokesperson Lt-Col Nadav Shoshani said.

HAMAS SAID ITS FIGHTERS IN JABALIA HAD DESTROYED AN ISRAELI TROOP CARRIER WITH A LOCALLY MADE ANTITANK ROCKET