UN high courtroom will resolve TODAY on Israel order to halt offensive

The United Nations top court today will rule on a plea by South Africa to order a halt to Israel‘s military offensive in Gaza, after Pretoria accused Israel of ‘genocide’.

Pretoria has urged the International Court of Justice to order an ‘immediate’ stop to Israel’s campaign and facilitate access of humanitarian aid.

 While the court cannot enforce its orders, South Africa’s call has put mounting international pressure on Israel. 

Israel wants the court to throw out the request, arguing an enforced ceasefire would make it impossible to recover hostages taken in their October 7 assault.

In a highly-charged ruling in January, the court ordered Israel to do everything in its power to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire. 

Smoke billows during Israeli bombardment in eastern Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their house due to Israeli strikes, shelter at a tent camp

South Africa argues that the recent Israeli operation in Rafah changed the situation on the ground and should compel the court to issue fresh emergency orders.

The ICJ’s ruling comes hot on the heels of a landmark request by the International Criminal Court’s lead prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders earlier this week. 

Prosecutor Karim Khan on Monday said he is seeking warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as three Hamas leaders, saying they are guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the October 7 attack and the war in Gaza.

An Israeli official slammed the ICC’s move as a ‘baseless blood libel’ against the country, while senior figures including President Isaac Herzog called the move ‘outrageous,’ saying it ‘cannot be accepted by anyone’.

The ICJ’s ruling comes after a landmark request by the ICC prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders earlier this week

In public hearings at the ICJ last week, South Africa’s ambassador Vusimuzi Madonsela alleged that ‘Israel’s genocide has continued apace and has just reached a new and horrific stage’.

‘Although the present application was triggered by the unfolding situation in Rafah, Israel’s genocidal onslaught across Gaza has intensified over the past few days, also warranting the attention of this Court,’ he said.

South Africa states the only way to enable humanitarian aid in order to ease the crisis in Gaza is a full halt to Israel’s military operations.

It wants the court to issue emergency orders while it weighs the broader South African case that Israel is breaching the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.

Israel counters that South Africa’s case is an ‘obscene exploitation of the most sacred convention’ and the picture Pretoria paints to the court is ‘completely divorced from the facts and circumstances’.

‘It makes a mockery of the heinous charge of genocide,’ said top Israel lawyer Gilam Noam at hearings.

‘Calling something a genocide, again and again, does not make it genocide. Repeating a lie does not make it true’, he added.

Israel pressed ahead with the assault on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah in defiance of global opposition, including from top ally the United States.

Washington has voiced concerns that about 1.4 million Palestinians trapped in the city would be caught in the line of fire.

An injured Palestinian boy stands next to the rubble of a family house that was hit overnight in Israeli bombardment in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood of Rafah in southern Gaza on Monday, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Israeli troops have moved in on the Gaza Strip’s far-southern city of Rafah, which the army describes as the last Hamas stronghold and where the US says 800,000 civilians have been newly displaced by the fighting.

A Palestinian man and his children sit in a destroyed room following the targeting or a residential building by an Israeli airstrike in Rafah in the southern Gaza on Wednesday

Israel has since ordered mass evacuations from the city, and the UN says more than 800,000 people have fled.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented attack on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Militants also took 252 hostages, 124 of whom remain in Gaza.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,800 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Israel has also imposed a siege that has deprived Gaza’s 2.4 million people of most clean water, food, medicines and fuel.