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HAGUE: The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to halt its Rafah military offensive.
“Israel must immediately hold its military offensive of 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,” Nawaf Salam, the head of the International Court of Justice ruled on Friday.
Nawaf Salam, declared that “Israel must take effective measures to ensure the unimpeded access to the Gaza Strip of any commission of inquiry, fact-finding mission, or investigative body mandated by the competent organs of the UN to investigate allegations of genocide.”
Salam continued, saying that Israel’s interim actions following the International Court of Justice’s earlier ruling on Gaza did not adequately handle the fallout from the altered circumstances.
Mr. Salam went on to state that the court is not persuaded by Israel’s evacuation attempts in Gaza.
He declared: “The court is not convinced that the measures Israel affirms to have implemented to improve the security of civilians in the Gaza Strip, particularly those recently displaced from the Rafah governorate, and the associated evacuation efforts are sufficient to lessen the extreme risk that the Palestinian population is exposed to as a result of the military offensive in Rafah.”
Criticism of Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza has been growing — even from its closest ally, the United States, which has warned against an invasion of the southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter from fighting elsewhere.
Only this past week, three nations in Europe declared their support for the creation of a Palestinian state, and the head prosecutor of a different U.N. court asked for the arrest of Israeli and Hamas leadership.
Israel’s offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians. The operation has obliterated entire neighborhoods, sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their homes, and pushed parts of the territory into famine.