THE INTERNATIONAL Court of Justice (ICJ) started its hearings yesterday on the use of humanitarian aid as ‘weapons of war’ by the Israeli regime against the entire Palestinian people of Gaza.
The World Court started the five-day proceedings following a request by the United Nations General Assembly to rule on Israel’s breaches of international law and its continued attacks on UN facilities in the Gaza Strip.
The case was prompted by the Zionist state passing laws outlawing the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, in October 2024, which was widely condemned as breaking the founding charter of the United Nations, in particular the immunities national states are expected to extend to UN agencies.
Norway and a group of other countries asked the ICJ to give an opinion on whether Israel, as a signatory of the UN Charter, acted unlawfully in tearing up these immunities. Israel doesn’t recognise or adhere to any international laws in its genocidal war to crush all Palestinian resistance and ethnically cleanse Gaza of every last Palestinian. Overshadowing these hearings is the ban on all humanitarian aid and food to the Gaza Strip imposed on 2nd March, days before Israel contemptuously tore up the so-called ‘ceasefire’ agreement with Hamas on 18th March.
Opening the proceedings, Swedish lawyer and diplomat Elinor Hammarskjold, legal counsel at the UN’s legal affairs department, explained that Israel is not entitled to sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories and that ‘Under international law, states are prohibited from acquiring territory by force.’
Therefore, passing laws banning UNRWA constitutes ‘an extension of sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories.’
The Palestinian ambassador to the UN, Ammar Hijaz, addressed the court directly confronting it with the reality of genocide that can get lost in legal arguments. He told the court that Israel’s efforts to starve and displace Palestinians and its targeting of the organisations trying to save their lives ‘are aimed at the forcible transfer and destruction of Palestinian people in the immediate term’ and that Israel is using humanitarian aid as ‘weapons of war’.
In the long term, he said, ‘they will also ensure that our children will suffer irreparable damage and harm, placing an entire generation at risk’. He told the court that Israel is turning Palestine, particularly Gaza, into a ‘mass grave’ for both Palestinians and rescue workers.
Last week, the UN World Food Programme reported it had depleted its entire stock of food in Gaza as aid workers warn of a catastrophic surge in malnutrition and starvation in Gaza.
The blocking by the Israeli occupation force of food and medical aid along with the deliberate bombing of food and aid storage facilities is precisely intended to turn Gaza into a ‘mass grave’, with the Zionist regime having the complete support of the United States and its imperialist allies in Britain.
While nearly 40 countries are due to testify to the court against Israel’s crimes, the US is to give testimony tomorrow in support of the right for Israel to commit genocide, while Labour leaders have maintained complete silence on these proceedings along with refusing to commit the government to carrying out the arrest warrants on Netanyahu issued last year by the International Criminal Court.
However, the judgement by the ICJ will only be made after months of deliberation – and then is purely ‘advisory’.
Palestinians cannot wait for months for a ruling that US imperialism and its faithful ally in Britain will ignore as they continue to arm and support genocidal war.
With over 61,000 killed in Gaza already and millions facing starvation, the time has come for the working class and youth who support Palestine and overwhelmingly oppose the complicity of their governments with genocide to act.
In Britain the fight against genocide and the support of the Starmer government for the Israeli regime must be at the centre of Thursday’s May Day demonstrations. The immediate demand must be to force the TUC to end their silence over Palestine and call a general strike to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers government that will break with the Zionist regime, recognise the independent state of Palestine and provide all the material aid required for the victory of the Palestinian revolution.