The Australian | 01.03.24
I think even the most ardent supporter of Israel will accept that they have no regard for International Law – it seems International Law applies to all countries except for Israel – Mark
Israel’s planned ground assault on Rafah in the Gaza Strip would contravene the orders issued by the United Nations’ highest court, the UN human rights chief said on Thursday.
On January 26, the International Court of Justice in The Hague — while stopping short of ordering an immediate halt to the war in Gaza — said Israel must “prevent the commission of all acts within the scope” of the Genocide Convention.
“I fail to see how such an operation could be consistent with the binding provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice,” Volker Turk told the UN Human Rights Council.
The ICJ said Israel must facilitate “urgently needed” humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, under relentless bombardment and siege since an attack in Israel by Hamas militants on October 7.
“The prospect of an Israeli ground assault on Rafah would take the nightmare being inflicted on people in Gaza into a new dimension,” said Turk.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the army will launch a ground invasion of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip — where an estimated 1.4 million Palestinian civilians have sought refuge.
The war began after the October 7 attack by Hamas, which killed about 1,160 people in Israel, according to an AFP tally of Israeli figures.
The Palestinian militants also took hostages, 130 of whom remain in Gaza.
Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive in Gaza have killed more than 30,000 people in under five months, most of them women and children, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Turk repeated that the Hamas attacks on Israel in October were “shocking, profoundly traumatising and totally unjustifiable”.
“The killing of civilians, reports of torture and sexual violence inflicted by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, and the holding of hostages since that time, are appalling and entirely wrong,” he said.
“And so is the brutality of the Israeli response,” he added, calling it “carnage”.
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