Israel’s deadly siege of Gaza Strip enters seventh month after Hamas’ Oct 7 attack
UN says half of Gaza population experiencing “catastrophic” hunger as threat of famine looms
72pc of enclave’s residential buildings destroyed, reconstruction to cost up to $40bn
Israel seizes Rafah crossing amid global outcry
Alarm in Israel at possible ICC legal action over Gaza atrocities
Israel has bombed the Gaza Strip, including Rafah, a day after the top UN court ordered it to halt military operations in the southern city as efforts get underway in Paris to seek a ceasefire in the conflict sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, AFP reports.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) also demanded the immediate release of all hostages still held by Palestinian militants, hours after the Israeli military announced troops had recovered the bodies of three more of the captives from northern Gaza.
The Hague-based court, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, also ordered Israel to keep open the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which it closed earlier this month at the start of its assault on the city.
Israel gave no indication it was preparing to change course in Rafah, insisting that the court had got it wrong.
“Israel has not and will not carry out military operations in the Rafah area that create living conditions that could cause the destruction of the Palestinian civilian population, in whole or in part,” National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said in a joint statement with Israel’s foreign ministry spokesman.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA) has released an update on the deteriorating situation in Gaza as communicable diseases rise and displaced people are desperately short of water as Israel intensifies its attacks from north to south, Al Jazeera reports.
No hospitals are currently accessible in northern Gaza, the World Health Organization reports, and as of Friday only the al-Awda Hospital was “considered partially functional” in the north, though it, too, was inaccessible amid Israeli military operations.
The International Rescue Committee and the organisation Medical Aid for Palestinians reported that in central Gaza displaced people are surviving on just 3 per cent of the internationally recognised minimum requirements of water.
At one shelter for displaced Palestinians, 10,000 people received just 4,000 litres of water per day, “translating to about 0.4 litres per person, for drinking, washing, cooking and cleaning”, UN OCHA reports.
The social media account of the Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa has shared an image of an Israeli soldier reading a book in a library at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa University while a shelf of books burns in the background.
The prime minister said the soldier had shared the image of himself “posing in front” of the burning books at the library, “which they had set on fire”.
“Israel has targeted all universities in the Strip, with some being completely destroyed,” the post on the prime minister’s X account adds.
The Israeli military has said there were “approximately 20 launches” of rockets from southern Lebanon into the Upper Galilee area of northern Israel, Al Jazeera reports.
It added that several impacts were detected in the Dovev and Manara areas of Israel, causing damage. There were no casualties or injuries, and the Israeli military said that “artillery struck the sources of the fire” in Lebanon.
The military added that Israeli fighter jets struck a number of “Hezbollah military structures” in the Souaneh and Ramyeh areas of southern Lebanon, as well as “Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure” in the Yaroun area, and “Hezbollah terrorists” in the Hanine area.
France’s president, Qatar’s prime minister and the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan held talks on Friday on the Gaza offensive and ways to set up a Palestinian state alongside Israel, the French presidency said, AFP reports.
French President Emmanuel Macron organised the meeting amid growing international concerns over the Israel-Hamas war. It came a few hours after the UN’s top court ordered Israel to halt its offensive in the Gaza city of Rafah. Efforts to revive a “two-state” solution to the wider Middle East conflict and humanitarian efforts for Gaza dominated the talks.
The officials discussed “all the levers that could be activated in order to obtain the reopening of all crossing points” into Gaza, said an Elysee palace statement.
The five countries also discussed how to “increase and deepen their cooperation” and “the effective implementation of the two-state solution, the only effective way to guarantee the peace and security of the state of Israel and to respond to the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians,” the statement added.
Macron and France’s Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne were joined at the meeting by Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and foreign ministers Sameh Shoukry of Egypt, Ayman Safadi of Jordan and Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, the Elysee said.
The French leader reaffirmed his opposition to Israel’s offensive in the Gaza city of Rafah and new settlements in the occupied West Bank. He also called for an “immediate” ceasefire with the release of “all hostages” in Gaza.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi agreed in a call with his US counterpart Joe Biden to allow UN aid through the crucial Kerem Shalom crossing to conflict-torn Gaza, the White House said according to AFP.
“President Biden welcomed the commitment from President al-Sisi to permit the flow of UN-provided humanitarian assistance” through the crossing, it said in a readout of the call.
“This will help save lives.”
Biden also gave his “full commitment” to back efforts to reopen the crossing to the southern Gazan city of Rafah, where Israel has launched a fresh operation, it said.
The two leaders also discussed ceasefire talks involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators, which have once again stalled.
The US president had agreed to send a “senior team” to Cairo for further discussions, the White House said.
The European Union is studying whether it could play a role in monitoring the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt after Israel’s bombardment ends, officials said according to AFP.
“We received demarches from different parties including Israel whether we could study the possibility to reopen it (the EU mission),” a high-ranking EU official said.
The official said EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell would likely get a green light from European ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday to draw up options for a potential redeployment of an EU mission.
“Obviously this would not be in the current circumstances, not in war circumstances. We are talking about the future,” the official said.
A European diplomat cautioned that the EU — which has struggled to come to a unified position on the Gaza bombardment — was still at the “very beginning of the possible process” towards launching the mission.
The Rafah border crossing is currently closed by Israel as it carries out an assault on the Gazan city.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he would consult senior ministers by phone after the UN’s top court ordered Israel to immediately halt its military operation in the Gaza city of Rafah, AFP reports.
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich responded to the ruling on X, formerly Twitter, saying “history will judge those who stand today alongside the Nazis of Hamas Daesh,” referring to the Islamic State group.
Hamas hailed the UN top court’s ruling for Israel to immediately halt its Rafah offensive but criticised its decision to exclude the rest of Gaza from the order, AFP reports.
The Palestinian fighter group “welcomes the decision of the International Court of Justice (ICJ)”, it said in a statement, adding however that it expected the ICJ ruling to “put an end to the aggression and genocide against our people throughout the Gaza Strip, and not just in Rafah”.
South Africa has welcomed an order by the International Court of Justice to Israel to halt its offensive in the Gaza city of Rafah and urged UN member states to back it, AFP reports.
“I believe it’s a much stronger, in terms of wording, set of provisional measures, very clear call for a cessation,” Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor told public broadcaster SABC.
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to report to the court within one month its progress in applying measures ordered by the institution today.
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to ensure the “uninterrupted access” of UN fact-finding missions and commissions to investigate charges of genocide in Gaza.
The International Court of Justice has ordered Israel to maintain and keep the Rafah crossing opened for the “unhindered” provision of aid and basic services into Gaza.
Nawaf Salam, the head of the International Court of Justice, has said it “is not convinced that evacuation efforts […] that Israel affirms to have undertaken to enhance the security of civilians in Gaza strip […] are sufficient to alleviate the immense risks to which the Palestinian population is exposed as a result of the military offence in Rafah.”
The International Court of Justice has said that the provisional measures taken by the court do not fully address the consequences of the changed situation in Gaza, Reuters reports.
The International Court of Justice has said that the humanitarian situation in Gaza’s Rafah is now classified as “disastrous”, Reuters reports.
The International Court of Justice has said that the humanitarian situation in Gaza’s Rafah has “deteriorated further” since its last order, Reuters reports.
French President Emmanuel Macron will host the foreign ministers of four key Arab states for talks on the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, AFP reports quoting his office.
Joined by his own top diplomat Stephane Sejourne, Macron will discuss the situation with Qatar’s Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Egypt’s Sameh Shoukry, Ayman Safadi of Jordan and Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, the Elysee said.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz declined to speculate on whether Germany would execute an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noting that no warrant had yet been issued and that Israel had an independent judiciary.
“A chamber of judges will decide,” Scholz said at a joint press conference in Berlin with his Portuguese counterpart when asked about the ICC prosecutor’s request for a warrant over Israel’s conduct in the bombardment in Gaza.
When deciding whether to issue a warrant, judges “shall bear in mind that Israel is a democratic state with a strong and independent judiciary.”
Under the principle of complementarity, the Hague-based ICC can only prosecute crimes where the local jurisdiction is unable or unwilling to do so.
If judges found that Israel was doing a credible investigation of the charges alleged by the ICC prosecutor, they could deny the request.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has welcomed the announcement by Ireland, Spain and Norway on recognising the state of Palestine, adding that it served as another milestone in the “decades-long quest of the people of Palestine for their inalienable right to self-determination”.
During a weekly press briefing, the foreign office said that the Gaza “genocide” and the dire humanitarian situation there have underlined the urgency of moving towards the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state.
“Palestine is now recognised by an overwhelming majority […] Time has therefore come to accord full membership to the State of Palestine at the United Nations […] We reiterate our call to the UN Security Council to positively respond to this growing international sentiment,” the foreign office said.
EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has urged Israel “not to intimidate” or “threaten” the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister, AFP reports.
“I ask everyone, starting with the Israeli government, but also certain European governments, not to intimidate the judges, not to threaten them,” Borrell said during an interview with Spanish public television TVE, calling for “respect for the International Criminal Court”.
What the court’s prosecutor “has done in presenting a case should not be considered as an anti-Semitic attitude,” the former Spanish foreign minister added.
Falasteen Abdulati mourns her vanished good life as a wedding photographer as she wearily queues day after day for scarce drinking water in a rubble-strewn street in south Gaza, fearing for the future of her children, according to Reuters.
The mother of seven is one of over two million Gazans who struggle to survive in the eighth month of an Israeli siege and invasion, with food, drinking water, medical care and safe shelter hard to find.
“I’m a wedding photographer. Someone like me should be going out and living well and spending money on their children,” Abdulati, 35, said, laboriously filling a few buckets with water from a battered barrel in the city of Khan Younis.
“Our life has (been reduced) to the simplest needs. It is work and exhaustion. Nothing else. The dream that I had as a wedding photographer to open a studio and to get cameras and to make people happy, is lost. My dream is lost.”
She continued: “Every morning we wake up at 7 o’clock and of course the first thing we think about is water,” she said. “We come here and wait in the long queue, just to fill up four buckets with water. Other than that, our shoulders hurt. There are no men to carry it for us. There is no one but us. Women are the ones working these days.”
“The future of my children that I worked tirelessly for is lost. There are no schools (functioning), no education. There is no more comfort in life,” said Abdulati.
