Since March 2, Israel has blocked all food, medicine, fuel, and other relief from entering the besieged Gaza Strip, home to 2.1 million Palestinian people. “Israel is starving, killing and displacing Palestinians while also targeting and blocking humanitarian organizations trying to save their lives,” Ammar Hijazi, Palestine’s ambassador to the Netherlands, told the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during last week’s five-day hearing. “Humanitarian aid is being used as a weapon of war.”

The ICJ convened the hearing at the request of the UN General Assembly to address the following 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?

Just days after the World Food Programme said it had run out of food in Gaza, the hearing commenced at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands. Thirty-nine states, the United Nations and three other international organizations presented oral arguments. All states but two — the U.S. and Hungary — condemned Israel’s denial of humanitarian assistance to the starving people of Gaza. Although Israel refused to orally address the ICJ, it filed a written statement with the court. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel decided “not to take part in this circus” and called the ICJ hearings part of a “systematic persecution and delegitimisation of Israel.”

Patricia Pérez Galeana, representing Mexico, quoted UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s April 29 statement to the UN Security Council: “The humanitarian situation throughout the Gaza Strip has gone from bad, to worse, to beyond imagination.”

Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 52,000 Palestinians, over 15,000 of them children. Thousands are missing under tons of rubble. Using the excuse of destroying Hamas, Israel has destroyed the life-sustaining infrastructure in Gaza, including shelter, hospitals, water treatment facilities, sanitation systems, farms, heat and power grids.

During the hearing, Saudi Arabia’s Mohamed Saud Alnasser said, “Israel’s hideous conduct, which piles illegality upon illegality, is well documented.” Zane Dangor, representative of South Africa, told the court, “The humanitarian aid system is facing total collapse. This collapse is by design.”

In June 2024, the UN Independent International Commission found, “Throughout the siege on Gaza, Israel has weaponized the withholding of life-sustaining necessities, specifically by cutting off supplies of water, food, electricity, fuel and other essential supplies, including humanitarian assistance.”

“Under the world’s watchful eye, Palestinians across the Occupied Palestinian Territory are being subjected to atrocity crimes, persecution, apartheid and genocide,” Dangor stated. “While we watch, the gaze of Palestinians is directed squarely at the international community, and this Court — whose advice is urgently being sought, for the protection of their most fundamental rights, including the right to life.”

While the current blockade on Gaza is unprecedented in scope and duration, Israel has maintained a siege by air, sea and land on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2007. A report by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released in 2021 stated that the Israeli blockade “has affected all social, economic and humanitarian sectors,” leading to mass poverty and unemployment, a deteriorating health sector, and energy and wastewater crises. “Most refugees are unable to secure their daily needs of food, water, electricity, health care and........

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