ICJ orders Israel to allow aid into Gaza and says restrictions breached international obligations

Israel must allow aid into Gaza, and its restrictions on doing so over the past two years have put it in breach of its obligations, the UN’s top court has found. The stinging advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in The Hague also found that Israel had a duty not to impede the supply of aid by UN organisations including the beleaguered UN Palestinian relief agency Unrwa, which has been in effect banned from the territory since January. ... The ruling that Israel has violated the UN’s immunities as set out in the UN charter, as well as ignored its humanitarian obligations as an occupying power under the Geneva conventions is bound to lead to further calls for Israel’s suspension from the UN. It is also possible that some countries will now claim that the UN secretary general António Guterres should seek damages from Israel for breaching the immunities of UN staff premises and entities inside occupied Palestine, by bombing them and ending cooperation with Unrwa. Israel has paid compensation in one previous case nearly 40 years ago. ... The ICJ findings – including an assertion that the humanitarian position inside Gaza remained catastrophic and massive casualties had occurred – took well over an hour to read and were mostly agreed by 10 votes to one by the Judges. ... In one of the most damning findings, the court said that Israel as occupying power is under a duty not to use starvation as a method of warfare pointing out that Israeli government blocked all UN aid into Gaza from 2 March to 18 May. The court found that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the aid agency set up by Israel, was not an adequate substitute, and that its existence did not relieve Israel from the charge that it was using starvation as a method of warfare. More than 2,100 Palestinians had been killed near its distribution points, the ICJ found. Conditions continued to worsen and international food experts declared a famine in parts of Gaza in August. The judges found that the mass transfers or deportations of a population in an occupied territory is prohibited under the Geneva conventions. It said that Israel had no right to block aid, or force hundreds of thousands of people into crowded areas or to restrict the presence of UN “to a degree that creates conditions of life that would force the population to leave”. ... (continued in the comments)