On Thursday, 28 March, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously ordered Israel to take all necessary and effective measures to ensure basic food supplies to the Palestinian population in Gaza and to stop a worsening famine.
The ICJ’s ruling is additional to the 26 January verdict, in which the court ordered Israel to take all possible measures to prevent acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, preserve evidence and take urgent steps to provide humanitarian aid.
The court observes that Palestinians in Gaza are no longer facing only a risk of famine, but that famine is setting in.
The ruling came as Israeli forces and Palestinian militants engaged in close combat near Al-Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad militias claimed they attacked Israeli soldiers and tanks with rockets and mortar fire.
The new measures were requested by South Africa as part of its accusations of Israeli “Gaza genocide”. A senior Hamas official Basem Naim stated that the solution did not go far enough and that Israel should be ordered to halt the military offensive to stop the suffering.
“We welcome any new demands to end this humanitarian tragedy in Gaza and especially in the northern Gaza Strip, but we hoped the court ordered a ceasefire as an absolute solution to all the miseries our people in Gaza are living through.”
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Thursday that more than 1.1 million people in the Gaza Strip faced “an extreme level of food insecurity” as Israel prevented aid from reaching the enclave. Israel, for its part, stated that it was making efforts to improve the access of humanitarian groups to Gaza overland, via air drops and by sea.
Medical sources announced on Thursday the death of a child in the northern Gazan town of Beit Lahia due to starvation and lack of available treatment, bringing the number of deaths linked to malnutrition in the enclave to 30.
The Israeli army claimed it was continuing to operate around the Al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City after storming it over a week ago. Five patients have died since the start of the Israeli raid due to lack of food, water and medical care, the Gaza Health Ministry reports.
Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital before the Israel-Hamas war, used to be one of the few medical facilities operating in northern Gaza before the recent hostilities. It also housed displaced civilians.
