MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Israel ready to ignore Court of Justice and reaffirms its right to self-defense

“Israel must immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah which may inflict on Palestinian groups in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction,” ICJ said

Israel condemned on Friday the ruling from the International Court of Justice in The Hague, saying that the 'genocide charges against Palestinians in the Gaza strip', were “false, outrageous and morally repugnant”.

The statement was in response to ICJ saying “Israel must immediately halt its military offensive in the Rafah Governate which may inflict on Palestinian groups in Gaza conditions of life that would bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
“Following the horrific attack against the citizens of Israel on October 7th, 2023, Israel embarked upon a defensive and just war to eliminate Hamas and to secure the release of our hostages,” the joint statement from Israel's National Security Council said.

Israel said that it was acting on the basis of its right to self-defense “in compliance with international law, including international humanitarian law.” Israel added it would not conduct military actions in Rafah “which may inflict on the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The Gaza war broke out after Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of some 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Militants also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the Israeli army says are dead.

According to Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry, more than 35,000 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory since the war began.

Last week South African lawyers asked the ICJ to order an emergency halt to the military operation in Rafah — a city in southern Gaza where more than one million people are sheltering — accusing Israel of intensifying what it calls “genocide” in Gaza.

South Africa has also been pushing for Israel to end its wider war in Gaza, but the court held back from issuing an order that covers the entire territory.

The South African government on Friday welcomed the order by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to immediately halt its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip.

”South Africa welcomes the order handed down by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) today by 13 votes to 2, ordering Israel, in conformity with its obligations under the Genocide Convention and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in Rafah, to immediately halt its military operation,” a statement issued by the South African presidency said.

In related news the bodies of three more Israeli hostages have been recovered from Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have said. They are those of Hanan Yablonka, Michel Nisenbaum and Orion Hernandez, it said in a statement.

The IDF said the men's bodies were recovered from the northern town of Jabalia overnight in a joint operation with Israel's domestic intelligence agency. It comes one week after three other hostages' bodies were retrieved from Gaza.

The UN also reported on Friday that 97 trucks of aid had been delivered to Gaza via the US-built temporary pier on the Palestinian territory's coast. The UN World Food Program “took possession of 97 trucks since the floating dock came into operation” on May 17, Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres, told reporters.

In the first couple of days of deliveries, some Gazans mobbed the trucks as they made their way to warehouses. “There were a number of trucks where people, as we put it, self-distributed, but the trucks themselves did make it,” Dujarric said, but “after a rocky start, the situation is stabilized.”

Meanwhile, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that between May 7 and May 23, only 906 truckloads entered the enclave of 2.3 million people, where a famine looms.