New ICJ order ‘a sharp rebuke to Israel’: Legal expert

• Suspension of military operations in Rafah indicates ICJ no longer sees any other means of protecting rights of Palestinians in Gaza, Michael Becker tells Anadolu
• It is ‘extraordinary’ the ICJ has ordered Israel not to impede access to UN fact-finding bodies to ensure that potentially relevant evidence in the case is preserved

ISTANBUL

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in a ruling on Friday ordered Israel to immediately halt its military offensive in Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip.

The president of the ICJ, Judge Nawaf Salam, read out the order on additional provisional measures requested by South Africa in the ongoing genocide case against Israel, instructing it to cease its military operation in Rafah as well as keep the Rafah border crossing open for unhindered access of basic services and humanitarian assistance into Gaza.

It also ordered Tel Aviv to submit a report on the measures taken on the latest order within a month.

Commenting on the hearing of the ICJ, Michael Becker, a former ICJ staffer and international law expert, told Anadolu: “This is not only a further recognition by the ICJ of the extraordinary humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It can also be viewed as a sharp rebuke to Israel.”

According to Becker, the ruling suggests that the world court views Israel as incapable of carrying out this war in ways that avoid violating the Genocide Convention or respecting the fundamental rights of the Palestinian population of Gaza.

“Up until this point, the ICJ has declined to indicate provisional measures against Israel that expressly require a suspension of military operations. By doing so today, at least with respect to Rafah, the court has indicated that it no longer sees any other means of protecting the rights of the Palestinian population in Gaza," he said.

Becker also deemed it “extraordinary” that the ICJ has ordered Israel not to impede access to UN fact-finding bodies or other UN-mandated investigators to ensure that potentially relevant evidence in the case is preserved.

He noted that in other cases, the court had declined to grant similar measures.

Among the three new provisional measures listed in the new ICJ order, the first calls on Israel to “immediately halt its military offensive, and 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.”

To a question about the wording of this specific measure, Becker explained that the ICJ “is linking the language of the order back to the Genocide Convention, since the ‘conditions of life’ language is one of the genocidal acts listed in Article II of the convention.”

“This arguably provides some leeway for Israel to argue that its military operations do not have that effect, but I think it would be a disingenuous reading of the court’s order,” he said.