As Israel’s case of war crimes and genocide is taking place at the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Tel Aviv announced it will send more troops to Rafah.
Israel said on this Thursday that it plans to deploy even more troops to Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza which is currently home to over one million Palestinian war refugees. The move can have no other meaning than Israel’s intention to extend its invasion in Rafah, the focal point in the war between Israel and Hamas.
Yoav Gallant, Israel’s defense minister, was the Israeli official who announced the news. “We are wearing Hamas down and we intend to send more troops in Rafah, where several tunnels had been destroyed,” Gallant said, claiming also that “four Hamas battalions are now in Rafah along with hostages abducted during the Oct. 7 assault that must be released at any cost.”
Israel’s cruel approach in Rafah is exacerbating while the United States, Europe and the United Nations have all been pressuring Tel Aviv in recent days not to invade the city or at least contain the attack to minimize civilian casualties.
For the past week Israel has described its offensive as a limited military operation, but satellite imagery and Gallant’s comments on Thursday suggested that a more significant incursion was already underway.
The shadow of famine over Rafah!
What makes Israel’s assault on Rafah more inhumane is that the city is the most important logistics hub in the Gaza Strip where most of the food, medicine and other aid to the Gazans has to passes through.
Israel’s invasion, however, has led to the closure of a border crossing between Rafah and Egypt and, for a time, greatly affected the passage of humanitarian aid to Gaza. The situation is in fact so alarming in the area that the United Nations’ World Food Program warned in a statement of eminent famine this week. “The threat of famine in Gaza never loomed larger than now,” it said, adding that rates of acute malnutrition among children aged under two doubled from 15 percent in January to 30 percent in March.
“We have seen the impact of prolonged closures in northern Gaza, and despite recent improvements in access to help mitigate a famine there, we are now also deeply concerned about the fate of hundreds of thousands in the south, if a full-scale operation and closures continue,” the UN body also asserted.
Thank to Israels military invasion on Rafah, the questions of where displaced Gazans will go and how food, medicine and other essentials will enter and be distributed across Gaza are also growing more critical day by day.
Israel denies any wrongdoing in Gaza at ICJ hearing!
It was on this Thursday that South Africa asked the International Court of Justice to order a halt to the Rafah offensive as part of its case in The Hague accusing Israel of committing genocide and war crimes in the Gaza Strip.
Israel, which has denied South Africa’s claim that it is violating the 1949 Genocide Convention as baseless, responded on Friday by first asserting that the invasion on Rafah will continue. Israel’s Deputy Attorney General for International Law, Gilad Noam, said at the hearing Friday morning that Israel is fighting a war against Hamas and denied that genocide is being committed.
Accusing South Africa of having an “ulterior motive” for urging an Israeli withdrawal from Rafah, the Israeli diplomat also claimed that South Africa is requesting this provisional measure because it “wants a military advantage for its ally Hamas, which it does not want to see defeated”.
