The ICJ orders restraint from Israel in Rafah

IT HAS BEEN a week of diplomatic disasters for Israel. It began on Monday with Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), requesting arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and defence minister. And it ended on Friday with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to limit its military offensive in Rafah. In the span of five days, the world’s top two courts issued harsh reprimands for the Jewish state.

Judges at the ICC must still decide whether to issue warrants, a process that usually takes several months. The ICJ’s order presents a more immediate problem. Unlike the ICC, which prosecutes individuals, the ICJ hears disputes between states—in this case, between Israel and South Africa, which has petitioned the court four times since the Gaza war began in October. South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide and asked the ICJ to order a halt to its military operations.

Its most recent submission, filed on May 10th, focused on the offensive in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, which began four days prior. Lawyers for South Africa described Rafah as “the last refuge for Palestinians in Gaza”. They argued that a ruinous campaign in the city, similar to the ones Israel had fought in other parts of Gaza, would make it impossible for Palestinians to continue living in the territory.

The court agreed—to a point. In a 13-2 ruling, judges ordered Israel to halt any actions in Rafah “which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”. That language is drawn from the UN’s convention on genocide. The judges, in other words, did not order Israel to halt all military operations in Rafah, only those that would cause widespread civilian death and suffering tantamount to genocide.

For many observers, that distinction is academic. Since Israel began its offensive on May 6th, more than 800,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah. Some moved to a so-called “humanitarian zone” that lacks basic infrastructure; they are living cheek by jowl on sand dunes, huddled under makeshift shelters with rubbish piling up and sewage running nearby. Other evacuees went back to cities that were largely destroyed in earlier rounds of fighting.

The fighting in Rafah has also disrupted the flow of aid into southern Gaza. Egypt stopped sending supplies through the Rafah crossing after Israel began its offensive, and the UN says it is unsafe to pick up shipments from Kerem Shalom, the main commercial checkpoint between Israel and Gaza. Just 143 lorries of aid have entered southern Gaza since May 6th (compared with more than 200 lorries in the days before the offensive). Aid workers say supplies in the south are running low across southern Gaza, with bakeries and charity kitchens closing for lack of food and fuel.

There is no chance that Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will heed the court’s order and scale back the offensive in Rafah. Though Israel is a member of the ICJ, it could simply announce that it will ignore the decree: the court has no enforcement powers. Member states could then ask the Security Council to take up the issue, but America would probably veto any action against Israel. Still, ignoring the court would invite further diplomatic condemnation. Instead Israel will argue that it is already in compliance with the ruling. Oren Marmorstein, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, said the country “has not and will not” conduct a campaign that would destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza.

That argument will probably not be sufficient to satisfy the court. International lawyers say Israel has a choice: it can stop the fighting in Rafah, or improve conditions in the rest of Gaza. America seems determined to help it do the latter. Hours after the ruling, Joe Biden called his Egyptian counterpart, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, and asked him to resume aid shipments through the Rafah crossing. Mr Biden said the Egyptian president agreed to send supplies through Kerem Shalom (though it is unclear whether the UN will be able to collect or distribute them).

It is easy to dismiss any one of the diplomatic blows Israel suffered this week. The ICJ’s order is vaguely worded and cannot be enforced. The ICC will probably never get Mr Netanyahu in the dock. The decision to recognise Palestine by three European states (Ireland, Norway and Spain) is a symbolic one. Put them together, though, and they show an isolated country almost entirely reliant on America for support. The fighting in Rafah will continue; so too will the damage to Israel’s reputation. ■