Sawt Falasteen - UN court says Israel must prevent genocide as Gaza war rages

The International Court of Justice said Israel must facilitate "urgently needed" humanitarian aid to the Palestinian territory, which has been under relentless bombardment and siege since the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the case as "outrageous" while Gaza's Hamas rulers hailed the ICJ ruling, saying it "contributes to isolating Israel and exposing its crimes in Gaza".

Soon after, the Islamist movement released a video showing three Israeli women held hostage in Gaza, two of whom said they were Israeli soldiers.

The UN court based in The Hague -- while refraining from ordering an immediate halt to the almost four-month-old Gaza war -- said Israel must do everything to "prevent the commission of all acts within the scope" of the Genocide Convention.

South Africa, long a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause, brought the case against Israel, accusing it of breaching the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, set up after World War II and the Holocaust.

President Cyril Ramaphosa and senior officials erupted in cheers after the ruling, which is legally binding although the court has no enforcement mechanism.

"We expect Israel as a self-proclaimed democracy and a state that respects the rule of law to abide by the measures handed down," Ramaphosa said, expressing hope the decision will lead to a new diplomatic push to end the war.

Speaking after the ruling, Netanyahu said the charge "is not only false, it's outrageous, and decent people everywhere should reject it".

Israel "does not need to be lectured on morality," his Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, and Israel's ally the United States reiterated that genocide accusations were "unfounded".

For the Palestinian Authority, the ruling showed that "no state is above the law", and the European Union said it wanted immediate implementation of the court's decision.

Palestinians had welcomed South Africa's case, but the court's decision left them caught between pride and frustration.

"We feel that the court could have clearly called for a ceasefire in addition to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza," Mais Shabana said after watching the ruling in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

In Jerusalem, shoppers at Mahaneh Yehudah Market were dismissive.

Aryeh Schaffer, a student, called the genocide accusation "absolutely ridiculous" because Israelis were "just defending their homeland".

- 'Heavy gunfire' -

The war started with the unprecedented attack by Hamas that resulted in about 1,140 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Militants also seized about 250 hostages and Israel says around 132 of them remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 28 dead captives.

Israel has vowed to crush Hamas and launched a military offensive that the health ministry in Gaza says has killed at least 26,083 people, about 70 percent of them women and children.

On the ground, AFPTV images from Gaza City on Friday showed hundreds of Palestinians crowding around an aid truck, after the UN World Food Programme this week warned of the increasing risk of famine.

In Khan Yunis, south Gaza's main city which has become the focus of Israel's military campaign, most services at the city's biggest health facility, Nasser Hospital, were no longer functioning "because of combat and intensive bombardments," the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) aid group said.

The health ministry had earlier said thousands of displaced people faced "starvation" at the facility, along with hundreds of patients and staff, "as a result of the Israeli siege".

Israel's army on Tuesday said troops had "encircled" Khan Yunis.

Elsewhere in the city, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli tanks were targeting Al-Amal hospital which was "under siege with heavy gunfire".

- UN employees fired -

Relations between UNRWA and Israel deteriorated further after the agency said tanks had shelled one of its shelters in Khan Yunis on Wednesday, killing 13 people among thousands who had taken refuge there.

On Friday UNRWA said it had sacked "several" employees whom Israel had accused of involvement in the October 7 attack.

The United States in response said it had suspended additional funding to the agency.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus denied Israel's charges it had colluded with Hamas by ignoring Israeli evidence of the group's "military use" of Gaza hospitals. He insisted the WHO is impartial.

- 'Stop the war' -

According to the UN, most of the estimated 1.7 million Palestinians displaced by the war are crowded into Rafah, southern Gaza.

With fighting intensified around Khan Yunis, more are fleeing. They walked, pushed wheelchairs, or piled their belongings into cars, tractors and donkey-drawn carts past Israeli tanks and other military vehicles flying Israeli flags.

"They besieged us, so we fled," said Tahani al-Nahhar. "We call on the UN and ICRC to intervene, to stop the war," she shouted.

An AFP journalist in Rafah said fears were growing about Israeli troops reaching the area, where people are pressed against the Egyptian border and smoke billowed from an Israeli strike.

A security source told AFP on Friday that the head of the US Central Intelligence Agency will meet officials from Israel, Egypt and Qatar "in the coming days in Paris" to try to reach a deal with Hamas militants over the Gaza war.

The United States, Egypt and Qatar helped negotiate a one-week truce in November that saw an exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

Washington is working to facilitate another deal on the release of hostages seized by Hamas and held in Gaza, but "imminent developments" are unlikely, the White House said Friday.

The war has led to fears of wider conflict, emphasised again on Friday when Yemen's Iran-backed Huthi rebels claimed a missile strike on a British oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden.

M.Qasim--SF-PST