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On the same day that the Israeli Knesset gave “preliminary approval to a bill to impose Israeli sovereignty on the occupied West Bank”, as Al Jazeera described it, accurately calling it “a move tantamount to annexation of the Palestinian territory, which would be a blatant violation of international law”, over 3,300 km away, in the Hague, the International Court of Justice delivered a blistering condemnation of Israel’s existing failures to “fulfil its obligations under international humanitarian law” as the occupying Power in the Occupied Palestinian Territory; namely, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, first occupied in 1967.

In an advisory opinion relating to the “Obligations of Israel in relation to the Presence and Activities of the United Nations, Other International Organizations and Third States in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, the Court’s eleven judges unanimously ruled that the State of Israel was required “to ensure that the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory has the essential supplies of daily life, including food, water, clothing, bedding, shelter, fuel, medical supplies and services” — from all of which, despite persistent and risible protestations to the contrary by senior Israeli officials, the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip have been horrendously deprived, though various “sieges” on all essential supplies, for most of the last two years.

The Court also ruled, by ten votes to one, that Israel was required “to agree to and facilitate by all means at its disposal relief schemes on behalf of the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory so long as that population is inadequately supplied, as has been the case in the Gaza Strip, including relief provided by the United Nations and its entities, in particular the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East [UNRWA], other international organizations and third States, and not to impede such relief.”

Unanimously, the Court also required Israel “to respect and protect all relief and medical personnel and facilities”, “to respect the prohibition on forcible transfer and deportation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, “to respect the right of protected persons from the Occupied Palestinian Territory who are detained by the State of Israel to be visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross” — an internationally agreed obligation that Israel’s far-right security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, sweepingly canceled for all Palestinian prisoners after October 7 — and “to respect the prohibition on the use of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.”

This latter point seemed, in particular, to be a pointed reference to the arrest warrants issued for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-defense minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court in November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including, specifically, “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.”

In further votes, the majority of the Court also upheld Israel’s “obligation under international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights of the population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including through the presence and activities of the United Nations, other international organizations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, and its obligation “to co-operate in good faith with the United Nations by providing every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, including the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”

The Court also called on Israel to respect “the privileges and immunities accorded to the United Nations, including its agencies and bodies, and its officials, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, to respect “the inviolability of the premises of the United Nations”, including those of `UNRWA, and to respect “the immunity of the property and assets of the Organization from any form of interference.”

Israel’s persistent attacks on UNRWA and the west’s shameful failure to defend it

The gulf between Israel and the ICJ could hardly be more pronounced.

In a devastating opinion in July 2024, the Court ruled that Israel’s entire occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem was illegal, and ordered it to withdraw completely and to pay reparations to the Palestinians, also reminding every other nation on earth of their obligations not to do anything to facilitate Israel’s ongoing crimes.

Earlier, in January 2024, the Court had also warned Israel, in no uncertain terms, that it was “plausible” that its unprecedentedly violent assault on the Gaza Strip, following Palestinian militants’ attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, constituted a genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention, and issued provisional measures intended to prevent confirmation of a genocide.

Israel, however, responded with contempt to the ICJ’s provisional measures, immediately, and with breathtaking cynicism, not increasing supplies of humanitarian aid to Gaza, as ordered, but, instead, accusing UNRWA of harbouring 12 Hamas members (out of 13,000 employees in Gaza, and 40,000 in total) who, it alleged, without providing any evidence, were suspected of taking part in the October 7 attacks.

Western countries shamefully rushed to suspend funding to UNWRA, instead of demanding evidence from Israel, or showing any recognition that Israel’s hatred of UNRWA, which was founded by the UN in 1949 and began its operations in 1950, is because its entire purpose is to provide food, medical supplies and education to a population they have always sought to eradicate, and, moreover, also advocating for the Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their historic homeland, as affirmed repeatedly in various UN resolutions since the blood-soaked founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

Western countries eventually reinstated their funding for UNWRA, but their credulous acceptance of Israel’s unsubstantiated claims had inflicted severe reputational damage on the organization, as well as revealing these countries’ supine willingness to abandon their commitments to the UN Charter and the UN-mandated work of UNWRA in favour of unquestioning support for Israel.

Their complacency, or their direct complicity in Israel’s crimes, was even more damnable given the extent of verifiable reports, including by the UN, that Israel had, as the ICJ described it, undertaken “numerous attacks on school buildings and healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip operated by the United Nations and others, including school buildings that had been directly hit”, and that, “between 7 October 2023 and 20 August 2025 at least 531 aid workers, including 366 United Nations personnel (360 of whom were employed by UNRWA), have been killed in the Gaza Strip”, with others seized and “disappeared” into Israel’s brutal and unaccountable prisons for Palestinians.

The January ceasefire and the horrors of Israel’s renewed genocidal assault

Emboldened by western indifference, as the ICJ explained in its opinion yesterday, the Knesset, in October 2024, passed two laws terminating its 1967 agreement to allow UNRWA to provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which came into effect in January this year, just after a ceasefire deal came into effect.

Under the ceasefire deal, as the ICJ noted, for 42 days “an increase of humanitarian aid was authorized to reach the Gaza Strip.” Then, however, Israel wilfully broke the ceasefire deal, imposing the most severe siege of all on March 2, which, until May 18, “completely prevented the entry of aid (including food and water) into the Gaza Strip and its distribution to the Palestinian population, with catastrophic consequences for [the] population.”

Israel sought to justify its actions based on claims that Hamas was “stealing supplies and using them to finance its operations”, although this was another blatant lie, designed to detract attention from the grisly truth that Israel had torpedoed the ceasefire deal to initiate an even more grotesque policy of extermination than that which it had been engaged in until the ceasefire began. Beginning on March 18, confirming its intent, Israel also “resumed military operations in and against the Gaza Strip” — again, with greater ferocity than had been seen since the earliest days of its genocidal operations.

Although Israel eventually allowed the UN to resume limited deliveries of aid to Gaza on May 19, most of its efforts at persuading the world that it was not deliberately starving the Palestinians to death were diverted to a new aid distribution system, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, established with the US, which, from the beginning, revealed itself to be a “Hunger Games”-style excuse for Israeli soldiers and US mercenaries to use starving civilians for target practice. With undue delicacy, the ICJ explained how “The United Nations, other international organizations and humanitarian non-governmental organizations considered that this new system did not align with humanitarian principles, did not meet people’s needs and put people at risk, and they refused to collaborate with it”, although, elsewhere in the opinion, the Court did manage to point out the horrendous death toll associated with the GHF operations, noting that, “According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, over 2,100 Palestinians have been killed at or near the distribution sites of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation since that system began operating on 27 May 2025.”

As the ICJ also noted, despite Israel allowing limited aid deliveries by the UN to enter Gaza, it “continued to impose substantial restrictions on the entry and distribution of aid and commercial goods into the Gaza Strip”, and by the end of August “the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip had become catastrophic, with evidence of famine, mass displacement, extreme levels of deprivation and a continued increase in civilian casualties, including children.”

Crucially, in response to Israel’s persistent claims that “a number of UNRWA employees had been involved in the 7 October 2023 attacks, that UNRWA premises had been appropriated by Hamas for military purposes and that UNRWA had long lost its neutrality”, the Court was resolute in its conclusions that, although the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services had reviewed Israel’s claims about UNWRA, which had “led to the dismissal of nine members of UNRWA personnel due to their possible involvement in the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks against Israel”, that was “insufficient to support a conclusion that UNRWA as a whole is not a neutral organization.”

In addition, and just as crucially, the Court also found that “Israel has not substantiated its allegations that a significant part of UNRWA employees “are members of Hamas . . . or other terrorist factions.”

What needs to happen now

Following the Court’s ruling, Israel, predictably, responded with a hysterical tirade in which, to quote its foreign ministry, it imperiously declared that it “categorically rejected the advisory opinion”, as the BBC described it, calling it “entirely predictable from the outset regarding UNRWA”, and dismissing it as “yet another political attempt to impose political measures against Israel under the guise of ‘international law.’”

The ministry also continued to insist, implausibly, that Israel was “fully upholding its obligations under international law”, adding, in intemperate language that fully revealed its unsuitability to be considered as a credible member of the global family of nations, that it would “not co-operate with an organisation that is infested with terror activities.”

As the BBC rather breezily described it, the Court’s opinion “is non-binding, but it carries significant moral and diplomatic weight.” The Guardian’s coverage was less blasé, however, with its diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour stating that the opinion’s “stinging” rebuke to Israel’s claims of impunity “is bound to lead to further calls for Israel’s suspension from the UN.”

What needs to happen now is for the international community to step up to demand that Israel complies with its obligations to allow unfettered aid into Gaza to relieve the crushing humanitarian crisis that has not been adequately addressed at all since the new ceasefire began two weeks ago. As the Government Media Office in Gaza reported just two days ago, although, under Donald Trump’s “Peace Plan”, 600 trucks a day of humanitarian aid were supposed to enter Gaza, only 986 aid trucks were allowed to enter during the first eleven days, and, of those 986, only 14 carried cooking gas, and 28 delivered fuel, even though both are essential for sustaining bakeries, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure.

Responding to the Court’s ruling, Andreas Kravik, Norway’s deputy foreign minister, said that the ICJ decision “confirms that the UN should be responsible for delivering aid, and this is in line with what is set out in the Trump plan.” He added, “We would expect Israel now to comply and we hope that will mean that the UN will be granted full access. We now expect Israel in line with the court opinion also to grant access not just to the UN but to the NGOs who are ready, willing and able to help.”

Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, expressed his frustration that Israel was continuing to restrict aid supplies, and warned that “a massive increase in aid is needed to begin to address the complex needs” of the population, which, he added, is experiencing a health “catastrophe” that will last for “generations to come.”

He called on the US in particular to act, stating that, “since the US has brokered the peace deal it has the responsibility of making sure that all sides are respecting” it.

To their credit, the Trump administration has already acted to curb some of Israel’s ongoing resistance to the terms of the peace deal. When two Israeli soldiers died last week, after a bulldozer that was lawlessly demolishing buildings in the 58% of Gaza still controlled by Israel ran over some unexploded ordnance, the US was swift to rebuke Israel for falsely claiming that its soldiers had been attacked by Hamas, and threatening to once more cut off all supplies of humanitarian aid.

Israel’s refusal to reopen the Rafah Crossing with Egypt, however, is still in place, preventing not only the delivery of essential aid, but also the departure of the more than “15,000 registered amputees who all require treatment abroad”, as Dr. Muneer Al-Boursh, the director-general of the Ministry of Health in Gaza, recently explained, in an emotive appeal in which he also stressed that over 170,000 wounded civilians urgently need surgery for which supplies and equipment are unavailable.

In addition to the US’s recognition of Israel’s fundamental untrustworthiness, Vice President J. D. Vance, visiting Israel over the last few days, has also vocally maintained the US’s opposition to Israel’s plans for the complete annexation of the West Bank, reiterating Trump’s assertion, last month, that “I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank.” As the Associated Press explained, Vance called the Knesset vote an “insult”, which “went against the Trump administration policies and efforts to ensure that the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas holds in Gaza”, while the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has also been vocal in his opposition to the Knesset vote, calling it “counter-productive” and a “threat to peace.”

Nevertheless, if the ICJ opinion is to mean anything, the US needs to exert further pressure to ensure that Israel complies with its obligations to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza at the necessary scale, especially because, as was discussed in a report by NPR just yesterday, Israel is currently moving in the opposite direction, not only maintaining its ban on UNWRA “sending aid and staff to Gaza”, but also, right now, “taking unprecedented steps to de-register major nongovernmental aid groups for ideological reasons.”

As NPR explained, Israel has recently initiated a new process “requiring that all international aid groups re-register under new criteria, including approval by a committee which includes representatives from Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.” As the broadcaster added, “Reasons for delisting aid groups include supporting ‘terrorist groups and activities in accordance with Israel law’ and ‘inciting racism’, according to COGAT, the Israeli military’s arm that is part of NGO approval process.”

UN and nongovernmental aid groups told NPR that many of their requests to enter Gaza, via the only two crossings from Israel that are currently open, “are routinely rejected, without explanation”, and, as NPR added, “The Norwegian Refugee Council, registered in Gaza since 2009, is one of the major aid groups unable to send in supplies or staff while its application is being considered.” Ivan Karakashian, the NRC’s communications manager in Jerusalem, told NPR, “We quickly realized that the intent behind the process wasn’t to facilitate the re-registration of humanitarian INGOs but rather to find a way to de-register us and to remove our ability to operate.”

Shamefully, western leaders have, for the most part, been silent in response to yesterday’s ruling. The US, despite its recent pushback against Israeli efforts to undermine the ceasefire, is an unreliable ally when it comes to defending the UN, but so too is the west’s largest bloc, the EU, which, just yesterday, was condemned by the Guardian’s Nathalie Tocci for failing to exert any meaningful pressure on Israel for the last two years, in an article that was aptly entitled, “The EU was complicit in the war in Gaza. Trump’s plan can’t be an excuse to dodge responsibility now.”

Those of us who care — and, as Tocci noted, “Israel’s violations of international law have triggered mass outrage among European people, but EU governments and institutions have lost touch with their own citizens, especially younger people” — need to continue to raise our voices in defence of the Palestinians, and in defence of the requirements of international humanitarian law, which Israel continues to flout so outrageously via its genocidal hysteria and its ongoing quest to, above all, find ways to evade any restraints in its pursuit of the only aim it now has a depraved pariah state lost to humanity — the continuing extermination of the Palestinian people.

* * * * *

Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of a photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’, which ran from 2012 to 2023), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (see the ongoing photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”, which you can watch on YouTube here.

In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and, in 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to try to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody.

Since 2019, Andy has become increasingly involved in environmental activism, recognizing that climate change poses an unprecedented threat to life on earth, and that the window for change — requiring a severe reduction in the emission of all greenhouse gases, and the dismantling of our suicidal global capitalist system — is rapidly shrinking, as tipping points are reached that are occurring much quicker than even pessimistic climate scientists expected. You can read his articles about the climate crisis here. He has also, since, October 2023, been sickened and appalled by Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and you can read his detailed coverage here.

To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s new Substack account, set up in November 2024, where he’ll be sending out a weekly newsletter, or his RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, and the full military commissions list.

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