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The top United Nations court ruled on an emergency plea by South Africa on Friday, with its judges ordering Israel to immediately halt its military operations in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip.
International Court of Justice president Nawaf Salam, calling the humanitarian situation in Rafah as “exceptionally grave,” read the ruling as a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside the court in The Hague.
Although the court has broad powers to order an end to the Israeli military campaign and any such ruling would be a blow to Israel’s international standing, it does not have a police force to enforce its orders. Russia, for example, has ignored a ruling from the same court to to halt its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Attacks on Oct. 7 in southern Israel led by Hamas, considered a terrorist group by several Western nations including Canada, killed around 1,200 people. Several of the dead were Canadian citizens.
Israel has said the operation in Rafah is necessary to continue to degrade the capabilities of Hamas. Ahead of the ruling, an Israeli government spokesperson said that “no power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza.”
Israel’s offensive since the war began has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, and has caused a humanitarian crisis and a near-famine.
The court also ordered Israel to keep the Rafah crossing into Egypt open “for unhindered provision at scale of urgently needed basic services and humanitarian assistance.” The court did not call for a full ceasefire throughout Gaza as South Africa, which brought the case, had requested at hearings last week.
The ceasefire request is part of a case filed late last year, accusing Israel of committing genocide during its Gaza campaign. Israel vehemently denies the allegations. The case will take years to resolve, but South Africa wants interim orders to protect Palestinians while the legal wrangling continues.
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