Analysis
As the world pursues international law, Israel uses famine, disease and raids
Israel will be able to sidestep the ruling, as it has done with all previous ones. It would be up to UN member states to make it effective, with sanctions, isolation, the freezing of diplomatic relations, an arms embargo.
In a five-day proceeding, with 40 countries in attendance, 15 judges of the highest court on the planet will be tasked with answering one question:
“What are the obligations of Israel, as an occupying Power and as a member of the United Nations, in relation to the presence and activities of the United Nations, including its agencies and bodies, other international organizations and third States, in and in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including to ensure and facilitate the unhindered provision of urgently needed supplies essential to the survival of the Palestinian civilian population, as well as of basic services and humanitarian and development assistance, for the benefit of the Palestinian civilian population, and in support of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination?”
The UN General Assembly has petitioned the International Court of Justice for their opinion, which is non-binding but politically weighty. The request was contained in a December 29, 2024 resolution, passed by a very large majority at the time. This shows the lengthy timescale of international law: meanwhile, on March 2, Israel sealed the Gaza border crossings, banning the transit of all goods needed to ensure the “survival” in question.
The Palestinians cannot wait: bakeries are no longer baking bread, there is no more gasoline for ambulances in southern Gaza (according to Monday’s announcement by the Civil Defense, it is no longer possible to retrieve those wounded in Israeli raids from this point forward), hospitals have become empty shells, and the sick are dying one after another, from infected wounds or chronic diseases that would absolutely be treatable if medicines were available (deaths that are not even counted in the official death toll).
International law, however, moves at its own pace. The International Court will listen to submissions from 40 countries, experts and international organizations for five days before it can make its ruling, which will come “probably in a few months, perhaps in 2026,” according to Triestino Mariniello, a jurist and part of the legal team representing Palestinian victims before the International Criminal Court.
What obligations does Israel have to the people it occupies and to the United Nations? This question is closely linked to the personal war unleashed against the UN system, with 295 UN workers killed, the banning of the UNRWA (the Palestinian refugee agency and main distributor and manager of goods and services to local communities), targeted raids on schools and facilities marked with the blue UN colors, and above all, the systematic and repeated violation of the norms of international and humanitarian law.
“The ruling is not binding,” Mariniello explains, "but it will be important, because it involves the fundamental principles of international law, and these are in fact binding: that is, the obligations of an occupying power, in Israel’s case in Gaza as well as in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”
Israel will be able to sidestep the ruling, as it has done with all previous ones. It would be up to UN member states to make it effective, with sanctions, isolation, the freezing of diplomatic relations, an arms embargo – avenues that have never been used, closed off like the Gaza crossings.
“I think the court will accept the task given to it and will be very explicit about the fact that Israel is violating international law, especially after the banning of the UNRWA in the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” Mariniello concludes. “And it will reiterate what it said in the interim measures it issued in January and May of 2024: while these proceedings are separate from the lawsuit brought by South Africa, the decision to ban the UNRWA is part of that genocidal plan: it is one of the ways to destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinian people.”
The five-day court proceedings in the Netherlands are part of a renewed engagement of the Hague courts on the Palestinian issue, from the decisions upholding the South African complaint against Tel Aviv for “plausible genocide” to the ruling in July 2024 calling the Israeli occupation illegal, a de facto annexation and an apartheid regime, which needed to be dismantled within a year, and continuing with the arrest warrants issued in November against PM Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Gallant. Taking advantage of his internationally guaranteed impunity, Netanyahu has further worsened living conditions in Gaza, and on Sunday, on the eve of the first hearing, he stressed once more that he intended to maintain military control of Gaza and carry out the Trumpian plan of ethnic cleansing of the Strip: “Believe me, many of them will leave.”
Israel is using famine, disease, indiscriminate raids – whatever it takes to convey the message to Palestinians that their only possible future in their land is death or an undignified survival. Between Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, there were 71 killed, for an official death toll of 52,300 since Oct. 7, 2023 (a number that doesn’t count the many thousands of missing or the “indirect” deaths).
And then there is the other front, the West Bank, where the army is working in symbiosis with the settler movement, responsible for now-daily attacks that are more and more terrifying: the acts of arson in the villages now come with kidnappings. On Saturday, the third such incident occurred: two Palestinians in Kober were dragged from their homes, stripped, beaten and taken away with their hands tied. They were freed the next night.
On Monday, in Sinjel, near Ramallah, a village targeted last week by both settlers and the army, Israeli authorities began erecting a wall. They plan to have it surround the community, separating it from the agricultural land and destroying a thousand olive trees. It stands as an image – by no means metaphorical – of the oppression of a people that has been under occupation for decades.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/la-fame-come-arma-a-giudizio-israele-torna-di-fronte-allaja on 2025-04-29