A man walks past a school building affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, on May 2, 2024. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)
This is the latest in a string of requests filed by South Africa with the ICJ relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
THE HAGUE, May 10 (Xinhua) -- South Africa asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on Friday to stop Israel's military offensive in Gaza's southern city of Rafah.
Filing an urgent request with the court, South Africa requested that it order Israel to "immediately withdraw and cease its military offensive" in Rafah.
Israel shall "immediately take all effective measures to ensure and facilitate the unimpeded access to Gaza of United Nations and other officials engaged in the provision of humanitarian aid and assistance to the population of Gaza," it further requested.
In its demand, South Africa said that the provisional measures previously indicated by the court "are not capable of fully address(ing) the changed circumstances and new facts..."
Israel's military assault on Rafah is posing "extreme risk" to "humanitarian supplies and basic services into Gaza, to the survival of the Palestinian medical system, and to the very survival of Palestinians in Gaza as a group," it said.
It "gives rise to new facts that are causing irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people in Gaza."
Children walk past a school building affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, May 2, 2024. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua)
"As the overwhelming evidence demonstrates, the very manner in which Israel is pursuing its military operations in Rafah, and elsewhere in Gaza, is itself genocidal. It must be ordered to stop," it said.
South Africa requested the court to take further measures for "the protection of the Palestinian people in Gaza from grave and irreparable violations of their rights."
"The extreme gravity of the situation facing Palestinian men, women and children in Rafah, and the existential risk that the Palestinian people in Gaza as a part of the Palestinian national, racial and ethnical group face, demands further action by the court," it added.
This is the latest in a string of requests filed by South Africa with the ICJ relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
On Dec. 29, 2023, South Africa filed an application to the ICJ for proceedings against Israel concerning alleged violations of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The ICJ, on Jan. 26, ordered Israel to take all possible measures to prevent genocide acts against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
This photo taken on Dec. 30, 2023 shows the World Peace Flame Monument at the Peace Palace, the seat of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in The Hague, the Netherlands. (Xinhua/Wang Xiangjiang)
South Africa asked the ICJ on March 6 for more urgent orders on Israel to end "widespread starvation" in the Gaza Strip. On March 28, the ICJ ordered Israel to do whatever is necessary to ensure that basic aid reaches the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. ■
