Judges at the UN’s top court will rule on South Africa’s request to order Israel to halt its Rafah offensive and withdraw from Gaza, part of a wider case accusing Israel of genocide, Reuters reports.

South Africa’s lawyers asked the court last week to impose emergency measures, and said Israel’s attacks on the southern Gaza city “must be stopped” to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people.

Rulings by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, are final and binding, but have been ignored in the past. The court has no enforcement powers.

Israel has repeatedly dismissed the accusations of genocide as baseless. It has argued in court that the operations in Gaza are self defence and targeted at Hamas militants who attacked Israel on Oct 7.

An Israeli government spokesman said on Thursday that “no power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza”.

An Israeli military spokesman said the army is operating “carefully and precisely” in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought refuge from Israeli bombing and operations elsewhere in the Palestinian enclave.

A decision against Israel by the highest UN legal body could pile more diplomatic pressure on the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.