“The background to this hearing is a UN General Assembly resolution introduced last year by Norway and a group of other countries, which asked the ICJ to give an opinion on whether Israel, as a signatory to the UN Charter, acted unlawfully in overriding the immunities afforded to the UN body,” Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands reports from The Hague, the Netherlands.

“What it comes down to is, does Israel’s treatment of UNRWA — the UN agency that looks after Palestinian refugees — adhere to its obligations, its humanitarian obligations?

“At issue are two bills that passed in the Israeli Knesset last year, in October, that declared that UNRWA harboured “Hamas terrorists”, as they put it, and instructed the Israeli government to end all cooperation and contact with the organisation, including supplying visas to UNRWA international staff, which has had a huge impact on the flow of food and aid into the besieged Gaza Strip,” he said.

“Now, five days of hearings will take place over the whole week, and at the end of that, we will have to wait, perhaps several more weeks, before we find out what the judges conclude from all this.

“Over the five days, we will hear from representatives from numerous different countries.

“Now it is likely that it’s not going to be until Wednesday that we actually hear from any country that is going to be supportive of Israel. That’s when the US and that’s when Hungary are speaking.”