Palestinians are waiting for aid trucks to cross in central Gaza Strip on Sunday, May 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Aid trucks entered Gaza from southern Israel on Sunday through a new agreement to bypass the Rafah crossing with Egypt after Israeli forces seized the Palestinian side of it earlier this month. But was unclear if humanitarian groups would be able to access the aid because of ongoing fighting in the area.

Egypt refuses to reopen its side of the Rafah crossing until control of the Gaza side is handed back to Palestinians. It agreed to temporarily divert traffic through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing, Gaza’s main cargo terminal, after a call between US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.

But that crossing has been largely inaccessible because of fighting linked to Israel’s offensive in the nearby city of Rafah. Israel says it has allowed hundreds of trucks to enter, but United Nations agencies say it is usually too dangerous to retrieve the aid on the other side.

The war between Israel and Hamas, now in its eighth month, has killed over 35,800 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Around 80 per cent of the population’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and UN officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine.

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Hamas triggered the war with its October 7 attack into Israel, in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas is still holding some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.

Egypt’s state-run Al-Qahera TV aired footage of what it said were trucks entering Gaza through Kerem Shalom. Khaled Zayed, head of the Egyptian Red Crescent in the Sinai Peninsula, which handles the delivery of aid from the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing, told The Associated Press that 200 aid trucks and four fuel trucks are scheduled to be sent to Kerem Shalom on Sunday.

It was not immediately clear if the U.N. was able to retrieve the aid from the Gaza side.

Southern Gaza has been largely cut off from aid since Israel launched what it says is a limited incursion into Rafah on May 6. Since then, over 1 million Palestinians have fled the city, with most having already been displaced from other parts of the besieged territory.

Northern Gaza, which has been largely isolated by Israeli troops for months and where the UN’s World Food Program says famine is already underway, is still receiving aid through two land routes that Israel opened in the face of worldwide outrage after Israeli strikes killed seven aid workers in April.

A few dozen trucks have also been entering Gaza daily through a US-built floating pier, but its capacity remains far below the 150 trucks a day that officials had hoped for. Aid groups say the territory needs a total of 600 trucks a day to meet colossal humanitarian needs.

Stormy weather sent a strip of docking and a small US military vessel ashore near the southern Israeli city of Ashdod on Saturday. The US Central Command said four of its vessels were affected by rough seas with two of them anchoring near the pier off the Gaza coast and another two in Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah in order to eliminate Hamas’ last remaining battalions and achieve its goal of “total victory” over the militants, who have recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza where the military had already operated.

Netanyahu faces growing pressure from the Israeli public to make a deal with Hamas to free the remaining hostages, something Hamas has refused to do without guarantees for an end to the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have ruled that out.

Scuffles broke out between Israeli police and protesters in Tel Aviv on Saturday after thousands gathered to demonstrate against the government and demand the return of the hostages. The protesters called for Netanyahu’s resignation and demanded new elections.

International pressure is also growing, as the war leaves Israel increasingly isolated on the world stage.

Last week, three European countries announced they would recognize a Palestinian state, and the chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Court requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, along with three Hamas leaders.

On Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah. The top United Nations court also said Israel must give war crimes investigators access to Gaza.

Israel is unlikely to comply with the orders, and has sharply condemned the ICC’s move toward arrest warrants for its leaders. Israel says it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and blames their deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas.

A United Nations expert told the global body’s Human Rights Council on Tuesday that she believed that Israel’s military campaign in Gaza since Oct. 7 amounted to genocide and called on countries to immediately impose sanctions and an arms embargo.

Israel, which did not attend the session, rejected her findings.

“It is my solemn duty to report on the worst of what humanity is capable of and to present my findings,” Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Territories, told the UN rights body in Geneva, presenting a report called “The Anatomy of a Genocide”.

“I find that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide against Palestinians as a group in Gaza has been met,” she said, citing more than 30,000 Palestinians killed among other acts.

“I implore member states to abide by their obligations, which start with imposing an arms embargo and sanctions on Israel and so ensure that the future does not continue to repeat itself,” she said, prompting a burst of applause.

The 1948 Genocide Convention, enacted in the wake of the mass murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Israel’s diplomatic mission in Geneva said the use of the word genocide was “outrageous” and said the war was against Islamist group Hamas and not Palestinian civilians. It was triggered when Hamas fighters entered southern Israel, killing 1,200 and taking 253 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

“Instead of seeking the truth, this Special Rapporteur tries to fit weak arguments to her distorted and obscene inversion of reality,” it said.

Gulf nations such as Qatar, as well as African countries including Algeria and Mauritania, voiced support for Albanese’s findings and alarm at the humanitarian situation.

The seats for Israel’s ally the United States were left empty. Washington has previously accused the council of a chronic anti-Israel bias.

Albanese, an Italian lawyer, is one of dozens of independent human rights experts mandated by the United Nations to report and advise on specific themes and crises. Her views do not reflect those of the global body as a whole.

In the past, her comments on the Israel-Hamas conflict have drawn scrutiny, including from a US ambassador in Geneva who said she has a history of using “antisemitic tropes”UN.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki and Palestinian U.N. envoy Riyad Mansour attend a public hearing held by The International Court of Justice to allow parties to give their views on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories before eventually issuing a non-binding legal opinion in The Hague, Netherlands on February 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The story so far: Israel’s war in Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas took centre-stage at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) this week again, as the UN General Assembly raised the question of illegal Israeli settlements in the court, with public hearings that will end on February 26. The hearings sparked a further divide between Western countries, many of whom sought to defend Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as the “right to self-defence”, and were ranged against Global South countries, most of whom had supported South Africa’s bid to have the ICJ try Israel for “war-crimes” for its actions. The latest hearings opened in the backdrop of a major rift between Brazil and Israel.

What are the ICJ hearings about?

The current hearings of the ICJ at the Peace Palace in The Hague (The Netherlands) are not a consequence of the Israel-Hamas conflict of the past few months, but pre-date them. In December 2022, the UN General Assembly had asked the court for an “advisory opinion” on two specific questions pertaining to Israeli actions in the past: first, what are the “legal consequences” for Israel over its policy of “occupations, settlement and annexation” of Palestinian territories since the 1967 war, and attempts to change the demographic status of Jerusalem, and second, what legal consequences arise for all other states and the United Nations over Israel’s “discriminatory” policies towards Palestinians. As many as 52 states and three international organisations gave written and oral comments during the hearings scheduled from February 19-26, led by Palestine, and followed by South Africa.

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Who were the key speakers and what have they said so far?

While a majority of the speakers at the hearings are from the Global South led by Brazil and South Africa, all P-5 members of the UN Security council submitted comments, although Israel chose not to participate. India was not among the speakers, but its neighbours, Pakistan and Bangladesh were strongly critical of Israel’s actions. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki gave a three-hour high-powered submission in which he said Israeli governments had left only three choices for Palestinians: “displacement, subjugation or death”, calling their actions: “ethnic cleansing, apartheid or genocide.” The U.S., U.K. and allies began submissions with condemnations of the October 7 attack in which more than 1,100 were killed in Israel. Ireland, however, has diverged quite dramatically from the West and the European Union in its criticism of Israel’s actions, countering arguments on the “right to self-defence” by saying that international law “limits the use of force in self-defence to no more than what is necessary and proportionate”. More than 29,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel’s bombardment began. While the ICJ case pertains to events pre-2022, it was clear that the destruction of nearly half of all structures in Gaza in four months are precipitating concerns that Israel plans to occupy and resettle that territory as well. Brazil’s ambassador in particular called for the ICJ to pronounce Israel’s actions of confiscating land, demolishing Palestinian homes, establishing Israeli settlements, and constructing the West Bank barrier wall as illegal.

Why have Brazil and Israel drawn daggers?

While Brazil and Israel have had close relations in the past, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has been openly critical of “Zionism” in the past. For instance, he refused to visit the grave of Theodor Herzl during a visit to Jerusalem in 2010. Last week, Israel declared Mr. Lula a “persona non grata” who won’t be allowed to enter the country after he compared Israel’s bombardment of Palestinians to the Holocaust in Nazi Germany in which six million Jewish people were killed. Brazil has since recalled its ambassador to Israel.

What is India’s stand?

Despite its abstention in one vote calling for a ceasefire in October 2023, India has consistently voted in favour of UN resolutions that are critical of Israel’s occupation and annexation of Palestinian territory. Unlike the rest of the Global South, however, the Modi government has chosen to keep public comments on the issue to a minimum, and the decision not to speak at the ICJ is in line with that. Several factors complicate clarity on the Indian position. On the one hand, there is an expectation from the Arab world, particularly from close partners such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, for India to stand with Palestine. Qatar, for instance, may have expectations after the Prime Minister’s visit this month to thank the Emir for releasing eight Indian naval officers. This may explain why New Delhi has spoken strongly about zero tolerance for the October 7 terror attacks, but has not designated Hamas as a terror group so far.

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On the other hand, there is India’s close defence and surveillance equipment cooperation with Israel. While India has been buying defence equipment from Israel, recently, it shipped drones made by Adani-Elbit Advanced Systems in Hyderabad to help Israeli operations. In addition, the government has green-lighted the recruitment of tens of thousands of Indian workers by Israeli companies dealing with labour shortages due to the expulsion of Palestinians from jobs post October 7 attacks. However, the area of greatest concern for Indian diplomacy will come if it is seen as an outlier to the Global South that India seeks leadership of, which has been clearly critical of Israel’s actions, and is increasingly speaking in one voice for international judicial accountability for them.