The following Security Council press statement was issued today by Council President Pascale Christine Baeriswyl (Switzerland).
The ICJ today ruled to reaffirm its previous rulings and issue new orders to Israel to cease its Rafah offensive. It also ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing with Egypt for humanitarian aid and international inquiries. It also ordered Israel to report back in one month.
The ICJ reaffirmed its 26 January provisional orders to Israel, with only the Israeli ad hoc judge and Judge Sebutinde again voting against, and ruled unanimously in favor of South Africa’s 6 March 2024 request for additional provisional measures to stop the famine in Gaza. The court also ordered Israel to not commit any of the crimes of genocide and to report back in one month.
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, representing the State of Palestine, announced on 28 March 2024 its intention to intervene in South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel for violations of the Genocide Convention. Palestine also thanked Belgium and Ireland for also filing interventions, and called on all State Parties who are signatories to the Genocide Convention to do the same.
On 15 March 2024, OXFAM International released a 26-page briefing paper, “Inflicting Unprecedented Suffering and Destruction: Seven ways the government of Israel is deliberately blocking and/or undermining the international humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip”, to outline how Israel blocks and undermines international humanitarian aid to Gaza.
Israel—and its supporters—regularly claim that Palestinians lie about how many Palestinians have been killed and injured as a result of Israeli violence. Experts who watch the statistics closely, disagree.
Aaron Bushnell was a US Air Force serviceman who self-immolated outside the US Embassy in Washington DC shouting “Free Palestine” on Sunday 25 February 2024, after explaining in a Twitch livestream that he could no longer be “complicit in genocide” (among other connections to the Israeli military, the USAF acts as the United States’ FedEx for weapons deliveries to Israel.
THE HAGUE, 1 March 2024. Nicaragua today filed an Application instituting proceedings against Germany before the International Court of Justice for alleged violations by Germany of its obligations deriving from the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the “Genocide Convention”), the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols, “intransgressible principles of international humanitarian law” and other norms of general international law in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly the Gaza Strip.
