Israel-Gaza war live: Judges at ICJ set to rule on Israel’s offensive amid fears for Rafah | Israel-Gaza war

Peter Beaumont

The international court of justice is expected to issue a new ruling on Israel’s conduct of its war in Gaza at 3pm CET (1400 BST) on Friday, as the US expressed concern over Israel’s growing diplomatic isolation among countries that have traditionally supported it.

Amid speculation that the ICJ could order a halt to Israel’s offensive, a second top global court – the international criminal court – identified the three judges who will hear a request for arrest warrants against Hamas leaders, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and its defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

Last week South Africa asked the ICJ, which is located in The Hague and also known as the world court, to order a halt to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and in Rafah in particular, saying this was necessary to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people.

ICJ decisions have in the past been ignored, as the top UN legal body has no way to enforce its decisions, but they carry international weight. A ruling against Israel could add to its political isolation after a series of setbacks this week.

Israel suggested it would defy any order to stop fighting.

“No power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza,” a spokesperson, Avi Hyman, told reporters on Thursday.

The latest legal moves come as Israeli media reported that Israel Defense Forces had concluded that troops had “breached regulations” when they killed a UN staff member and wounded a second one last week in Gaza when a marked UN vehicle was shelled and hit with a drone-dropped grenade.

Israel has faced mounting problems on the international stage in recent days. On Wednesday, after Ireland, Norway and Spain said they would recognise Palestinian statehood, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, expressed concern over Israel’s isolation.

It’s just past 10am in Gaza and Tel Aviv, welcome to the continuation of our live coverage of the Israel-Gaza war.

Judges at the UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), are due to rule on South Africa’s request to order Israel to halt its Rafah offensive and withdraw from Gaza, part of a wider case accusing Israel of genocide.

South Africa’s lawyers asked the court last week to impose emergency measures, and said Israel’s attacks on the southern Gaza city “must be stopped” to ensure the survival of the Palestinian people.

Pretoria has urged the International Court of Justice to order an “immediate” stop to Israel’s campaign and facilitate access of humanitarian aid.

Israel has repeatedly dismissed the accusations of genocide as baseless. It has argued in court that the operations in Gaza are self-defence and targeted at Hamas militants who attacked Israel on 7 October.

Rulings by the ICJ, also known as the world court, are final and binding, but have been ignored in the past. The court has no enforcement powers.

The ICJ’s ruling follows a landmark request by the international criminal court’s (ICC) lead prosecutor to seek arrest warrants for top Israeli and Hamas leaders.

More on that in a moment but first, here’s a summary of the latest developments:

• Prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert are being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses, with at least one reported case of a man having his limb amputated as a result of injuries sustained from constant handcuffing, according to two whistleblowers who worked at the site. Responding to the claims, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement: “Among the detainees held at the Sde Teiman facility are skilled military operatives at a very high level of danger. Detainees are handcuffed according to their level of risk and their state of health.”

• All EU donors have now resumed their support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), said Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, on Thursday. In a social media post, Borrell described Unrwa as “an indispensable lifeline in Gaza and the region”.

• The Hostages Families Forum in Israel has released graphic footage of female Israeli soldiers captured by Hamas from a military base during the 7 October attacks. The three-minute video showed the women, all IDF personnel, sitting on the ground, some bruised and bloodied, with their hands tied after their capture from the Nahal Oz base in southern Israel.

• Republican US House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Thursday that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, would soon address a joint meeting of Congress. Delivering a keynote speech at the Israeli embassy’s annual Independence Day reception, Johnson, the top congressional Republican and a critic of the Democratic president’s Israel policy, said it would be “a strong show of support for the Israeli government in their time of greatest need,” Reuters reports.

• The CIA director, Williams Burns, will shortly travel to Europe for a meeting with the Mossad director, David Barnea, to try to revive talks on the hostages in Gaza, Axios said on Thursday, citing US and Israeli officials.

• At least 35,800 Palestinians have been killed and 80,011 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The Hamas-run health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants.

• Israeli forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in aerial and ground bombardments across the Gaza Strip on Thursday and battled in close combat with Hamas-led militants in areas of the southern city of Rafah, health officials and Hamas media said. Israeli tanks advanced in Rafah’s south-east, edged towards the city’s western district of Yibna and continued to operate in three eastern suburbs, residents said, according to Reuters.

• The World Bank says the fiscal situation of the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, has worsened in the last three months, “significantly raising the risk of a fiscal collapse,” Reuters reports. “The rapidly widening gap between the amount of revenues coming in, and the amount needed to finance essential public expenditure, is driving a fiscal crisis,” it said.

• A two-day Israeli raid on the occupied West Bank city of Jenin killed at least 12 Palestinians, health authorities and an Agence France-Presse (AFP) correspondent reported. The Palestinian health ministry in Ramallah said Israeli forces had killed 12 people including four children, and injured 25 during the fighting which began on Tuesday morning.

• Both Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian militant group Hamas condemned the raid. Israel’s army said on Wednesday troops had “exchanged fire with armed men and killed a number of terrorists, including two terrorists who threw explosives at the forces”.

• Surgeon Usaeed Jabareen, from Jenin’s Khalil Suleiman government hospital, was among those killed on Tuesday said the official Palestinian news agency Wafa and medical charity Doctors Without Borders. An AFP correspondent on Thursday saw five bodies at the hospital morgue, including Jabareen’s.

• US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned of the risk of a “humanitarian crisis” if Israel cuts off a crucial financing channel to Palestinian banks. Ahead of a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Stresa in northern Italy, she told reporters: “I’m particularly concerned by Israel’s threats to take action that would lead to Palestinian banks being cut off from their Israeli correspondent banks.”

• A United Nations expert called on Israel on Thursday to investigate multiple allegations of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees in the wake of the 7 October attack by Hamas. The UN special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, said in a statement she had received reports of some detainees being deprived of sleep, threatened with physical and sexual violence, insulted and exposed to humiliating acts, including “being photographed and filmed in degrading poses”. There was no immediate reaction from the Israeli government or military.

• Lebanese schoolchildren on a minibus had a narrow escape on Thursday when a drone strike killed a Hezbollah fighter in the car ahead, blowing out the windscreen of their vehicle and injuring three pupils. The source close to Hezbollah told AFP that Israel was behind the strike, which killed a Hezbollah member who was named as Mohammad Ali Nasser Farran.

• Later on Thursday, Hezbollah said it had launched dozens of rockets at a base in northern Israel. It said its katyusha barrage was “in response to the assassination carried out by the enemy in Kafardjal, and the injuring and terrorising of children”.

• A merchant ship off the coast of Yemen reported a missile hitting the water nearby, the UK’s sea trade monitoring agency reported on Thursday, adding that the vessel and all crew were safe and proceeding to the next port of call.